Rio de Janeiro to Port Desire
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The Tamar worked into the harbour with the tide of flood, but I kept my station with the Dolphin till I should have a leading wind, and the wind shifting to the eastward, I weighed about five o’clock in the afternoon, intending to go up with the evening flood: before I could get under sail, however, the wind shifted again to N.W. by N.; and it being low water, the ship lying but just within the harbour, and there being no tide to assist us, we were obliged to anchor near the south shore. The wind came off the land in very hard flaws, and in a short time, our anchor coming home, the ship tailed on shore against a steep gravelly beach. The anchoring ground indeed as far as we had yet sounded was bad, being very hard; so that, in this situation, if the wind blows fresh, there is always the greatest reason to fear that the anchor should come home before the ship can be brought up. While we were on shore, it began to blow very hard, and the tide running like a sluice, it was with the utmost difficulty that we could carry an anchor out to heave us off; however, after about four hours hard labour, this was effected, and the ship floated in the stream. As there was only about six or seven feet of the after part of her that touched the ground, there was reason to hope that she had suffered no damage; however, I determined to unhang the rudder, that it might be examined.
During all this night and the next morning the wind blew with great violence; we had let go our best bower anchor when we were near the shore, in hopes it would have brought us up, and had not yet been able to weigh it. We now rode in a very disagreeable situation with our small bower, and that unfortunately came home again: we therefore got a hawser out of the Tamar, who lay in the stream, and after weighing the small bower, we got out by her assistance,
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 16, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/052.html