Transactions at Batavia and passage to the Cape of Good Hope
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fit for our use they should be bought. At their return, they informed me that all the stores they had seen were rotten, and unfit for use, except one pair of tacks, which they brought with them: the masts, yards, and cables were all dropping to pieces, and even the iron work was so rusty that it was worth nothing. They also went on board the Falmouth to examine her hulk, and found her in so shattered a condition, that in their opinion she could not be kept together during the next monsoon. Many of her ports were washed into one, the stern-post was quite decayed, and there was no place in her where a man could be sheltered from the weather. The few people who belonged to her were in as bad a state as their vessel, being quite broken and worn down, and expecting to be drowned as soon as the monsoon should set in.
Among other necessaries, we were in want of an anchor, having lost two, and of three inch rope for rounding the cables; but the officers whom I had sent to procure these articles, reported, that the price which had been demanded for them was so exorbitant, that they had not agreed to give it. On Saturday the 5th, therefore, I went on shore myself, for the first time, and visited the different storehouses and arsenals, but found it impossible to make a better bargain than my officers. I suspected that the dealers took advantage of our apparent necessity, and supposing that we could not sail without what we had offered to purchase, determined to extort from us more than four times its value. I was, however, resolved to make any shift rather than submit to what I thought a shameful imposition, and therefore told them that I should certainly sail on the next Tuesday; that if they would agree to my terms in the mean time, I would take the things I had treated for; if not, that I would sail without them.
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 508, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/511.html