Tinian to Pulo Timoan and thence Batavia
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On the 19th, we spoke with an English snow, belonging to the East India Company, which was bound from Bencoolen to Malacca and Bengal. We had now nothing to eat but the ship’s provisions, which were become very bad, for all our beef and pork stunk intolerably, and our bread was rotten and full of worms; but as soon as the Master of this snow learnt our situation, he generously sent me a sheep, a dozen fowls, and a turtle, which I verily believe was half his stock, besides two gallons of arrack, and would accept nothing but our thanks in return. It is with great pleasure that I pay this tribute to his liberality, and am very sorry that I cannot recollect his name, or the name of his vessel. In the afternoon, we worked round the First Point of Sumatra, and our soundings on the north-side, at the distance of about a mile and a half from the shore, were fourteen fathom. At half an hour after three we anchored, and sent a boat to sound for the shoals which lie to the northward of the island called Lasipara, which bore from us S.E. by S. distant about six leagues. Little wind, and a strong tide of flood to the northward, prevented our working between these shoals and the coast of Sumatra till the afternoon of the twentieth: the soundings were very regular, being nine or ten fathom as we stood over to the island, and five or six when we stood over to Sumatra. As this Streight has been often navigated, and is well known, it is not necessary to insert all the particulars of our passage through it; I shall therefore only say, that at six o’clock in the evening of Tuesday the 27th, we steered between the islands Edam and Horn, and entered the road of Batavia. At eight, we anchored without the ships, Onrust bearing W.N.W. distant five or six miles.
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 130, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/166.html