The Cape and the Kaffirs: A Diary of Five Years' Residence in Kaffirland. Ward
about Cape Town, attempting races, or philandering at the balls. We were to remain in harbour about five days for water and provisions, (our stock being quite exhausted) then to proceed on our voyage.
On Saturday morning, the 27th of August, all the officers not for duty obtained permission to go on shore; the command of the troops on board devolving on Captain Gordon, 91st regiment. All landed but six; my husband was one of those to remain, consequently I did not accept the kind invitation of a friend to accompany him with my little girl to his house near Cape Town. Afterwards, in the hour of danger, and in the time of extreme terror, I had a strange undefinable satisfaction in having remained, though the sight of my child made me wish I had sent her on shore in the morning. Towards evening, the wind increased considerably; but, though there was a heavy sea and every prospect of a gale, our captain depended on his anchors. The Agent, Lieutenant Black, R.N., had gone on shore on duty at four o’clock in the evening, and being invited to dine with the Governor at seven o’clock, was in consequence prevented, by the impossibility of boats getting off, from returning on board, The whole responsibility, therefore, devolved on the Master, Mr John Young. The wind and sea rising caused at first but little alarm; at twelve o’clock, however, the ship shivered; apparently from being struck by a heavy sea. She trembled in every joint, and the same sensation being almost immediately after felt again, it was evident the vessel touched the bottom and with some violence. I rose from my bed, and dressing my child and myself, we proceeded with my husband to the cuddy, where some of the officers were assembled round the stove, the night being bitterly cold. The captain, still depending on the strength of his anchor-chains, saw no great cause of alarm, and having put my child to sleep on a chair, which Captain Gordon kindly prepared for her, I retired again to my berth, and being quite worn out, soon fell fast asleep. I was awoke by my husband bidding me rise and come on deck immediately, the anchor-chains having both snapped one after the other. My little Isabel stood beside her father partly dressed, and pale and silent. I have no distinct recollection of what happened for the first half hour after this awful intelligence. I remember hearing the water splashing about my cabin, and seeing our little lamp swinging violently backwards and forwards. I remember being dragged in unshod feet along the wet deck, up the steerage hatchway, while my husband carried my child. I can remember, too, her little voice issuing from my bed, into which she had crept to fasten on her warm boots, and begging me not to be frightened.
“How calm she is!” said I, to my husband.
“Poor thing!” he whispered, “she does not know her danger.”
“Yes, I do,” she answered, overhearing us; “but mamma has often told me that God Almighty can take care of us if He pleases; and I keep saying that to myself, and then I am not half so frightened.”
I remember the very height of the storm, when the noise of the thunder could scarcely be distinguished from the roar of the waters, and the torrents of rain,—when the elements in fact howled wildly and angrily at one another,—when the lightning pouring, as one may call it, on our decks, blazed in at the fore windows of the cuddy, being horror-stricken at the ghastly faces assembled under the uncertain and flickering light of a broken lamp. I can remember when the water rose up to my knees, being carried between decks with my child, through rows of shrieking women and silent soldiers. The conduct of our men was beyond all praise.
For some time, I sat on a chest with my child, near the fore-hatch, the ship continuing to drive, every moment striking against the sand, and our only hopes resting on the coming of the dawn, which would show us where we were, the floods of rain preventing the lightning—vivid as it was—from doing this distinctly. About six in the morning, the master came down among us with some comfort, saying he hoped the ship was making a bed for herself in the sand. In truth, she had been all night like some great creature scratching her way through it with restless impatience. The rudder had been carried away from the first, the stern cabins knocked into one, and the sea bubbling up like a fountain in the after part of the ship. We were yet uncertain of our safety, for there were rocks not many hundred yards from us on which the “Waterloo” convict ship had already struck; but of her anon. Meanwhile, our people attaching a rope to a shot, fired it on shore, but in vain. All night the guns from the fort and other vessels had been giving awful warnings to the town, while the constant roll of musketry onboard the convict ship, led us to imagine that the convicts were mutinous. This was, however, discovered afterwards not to be the case; they had been loosened from their bonds on the first alarm, and desired to make use of the first possible means of escape.
At length, as we neared the coast, which for some time had been crowded with spectators, we were enabled, through God’s mercy, to get a boat on shore with a rope attached to the ship, and afterwards fastened to an anchor driven in the sand. As the surf-boats put off, the first of which brought Lieutenant Black, the Agent, on board, our men gave nine hearty cheers, and in a few minutes we commenced our disembarkation; the women and children being lowered into the boats first: I waited for the third boat. Such a noble example had been shown by the officers to their men, and its effects on the latter had been so important, that, in spite of my anxiety to land, I felt unwilling to exhibit it by hurrying from the ship to the shore, and thus creating unnecessary fears among the poor uneducated women, whose terrors I had witnessed during the awful hours of the night. As I was carried between decks, I had been struck, in spite of my fears, with the scene that met my view there. Pale women, with dishevelled hair, stretched themselves from their beds, wringing their hands, and imploring me to comfort them. Some prayed aloud; others, Roman Catholics, called on the Virgin and their favourite saints to help them in their peril; and many bent in silent but eloquent agony over their unconscious infants. One woman who had, during the whole voyage, been considered as dying of deep decline, sat up in the hammock which had been carefully slung for her, and with a calm voice, which was yet distinguishable from the noise around her, imparted a certain confidence in the power of the Almighty to all who were willing to listen to her, or at least prepared them to view their possibly approaching fate with more resignation. That calm, steady voice sounded strangely amid the cries of fearful women, the hoarse voices of reckless sailors, and the crashing of timbers; while, above all, still rolled on the sound of musketry from the convict ship, “Waterloo,” now beating violently against the rocks, and beyond immediate help; while the appearance of hundreds on the beach striving, some to get their boats off, and others with daring spirit urging their horses through the surf, formed a scene difficult to describe, even by the pen of a mere looker-on.
Our ship was a stout vessel, and held well together. I embarked at last in a surf-boat with my child (my husband of course waited for his company), and with a heart full of earnest gratitude to the Almighty, I approached the land. Had I dreamt of the awful calamity which afterwards befell our unfortunate neighbour, the “Waterloo,” I should not have felt the exhilaration of spirit I did as the Lascars bore me from the boat to the shore through the surf, while Mr Dalzell, of the 27th, carried my child gallantly through it before him on his saddle. Mr Jenkins’ carriage stood waiting for us on the beach; and having had the satisfaction of witnessing my husband’s disembarkation with his men, we started for our kind friend’s charming villa, in the neighbourhood of Cape Town. As we drove on, the sight of the “Waterloo’s” inverted flag, half-mast high, made me shudder; but, as the tide was falling (which, by-the-by, increased the danger of her position, but of this I was unaware), I trusted the boats might be enabled to reach her, and thus hoped for the best. In half an hour afterwards, her mainmast fell over her side, the ship parted in four different places, and in less than ten minutes upwards of 200 unfortunate beings were precipitated into the raging surf. About 70 escaped by swimming on shore; among them Mr Leigh, of the 99th regiment; many were crushed beneath the falling spars; ghastly faces gleamed up from the boiling waters, and with outstretched arms implored help from the shore. Eyes, glazed with agony and despair, burst from their sockets as the rising heads of the sufferers got jammed between floating timbers; and mothers, with infants clinging to their bosoms, were washed off the rafts to which they vainly strove to cling, whilst:
”—The bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony,”
rose above the roar of the elements, and in a moment was smothered by the dash of the raging waters over his helpless limbs. Only one woman was saved: she, poor creature, had