Transactions at Batavia and passage to the Cape of Good Hope
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Soon after I returned on board, I received a petition from the Warrant-Officers of the Falmouth, representing, that there was nothing for them to look after: that the Gunner had been long dead, and his stores spoiled, particularly the powder, which, by order of the Dutch, had been thrown into the sea: that the boatswain, by vexation and distress, had lost his senses, and was then a deplorable object in a Dutch hospital: that all his stores had been long spoiled and rotten, the roof of the storehouse having fallen in during a wet monsoon, and left them exposed many months, all endeavours to procure another place to put them in being ineffectual: that the carpenter was in a dying condition, and the cook a wounded cripple. For these reasons, they requested that I would take them home, or at least dismiss them from their charge. It was with the greatest regret and compassion that I told these unhappy people it was not in my power to relieve them, and that as they had received charge of stores, they must wait orders from home. They replied, that they had never received a single order from England since they had been left here, and earnestly intreated that I would make their distress known, that it might be relieved. They had, they said, ten years pay due, in the expectation of which they were grown old, and which now they would be content to forfeit, and go home sweepers, rather than continue to suffer the miseries of their present situation, which were indeed very great. They were not suffered to spend a single night on shore, whatever was their condition, and when they were sick, no one visited them on board; they were, besides, robbed by the Malays, and in perpetual dread of being destroyed by them, as they had a short time before burnt the Siam prize. I assured them that I would do my utmost to procure them relief, and they left me with tears in their eyes.
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 509, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/512.html