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THE STORM HOWLED through the rigging. The crew and passengers were on deck, fastened by ropes to the stanchions. The captain shouted: ‘It’s a bad storm, but we should be quite safe.’ With very little sail, we were riding the storm well. Suddenly, even through the noise and commotion of the storm, loud percussions were heard below and we felt them in our bodies. A tall dark man came rushing up from below and shouted to the helmsman: ‘We’re taking on a lot of water.’
The ship was sinking. The helmsman called: ‘To the lifeboats! Ten people in each. Forget your belongings. Go! Now!’ The lifeboats were hard to launch, and even harder to board, given the lurching motion of the sea. Room on the boats was limited, time was short, and the captain’s orders were difficult to hear over the battery of the wind. Panic prevailed. The first lifeboat soon foundered under a mountainous breaking wave. Shortly the ship herself had disappeared, and all that could be seen through the spume from the waves was fragments of wreckage and people swimming desperately or trying to keep afloat. Cries of despair and calls for help could not be heard through the screaming wind and the crash of the waves. Most of these people perished in the angry water, never again to see their homelands, or their families.
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