Discovery of Queen Charlotte's Island
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The next morning, the weather being fine, we veered the ship close in shore, with a spring upon our cable, so that we brought our broadside to bear upon the watering-place, for the protection of the boats that were to be employed there. As there was reason to suppose that the natives whom we had seen among the trees the night before, were not now far distant, I fired a couple of shot into the wood, before I sent the waterers ashore; I also sent the Lieutenant in the cutter, well manned and armed, with the boat that carried them, and ordered him and his people to keep on board, and lie close to the beach to cover the watering-boat while she was loading, and to keep discharging musquets into the wood on each side of the party that were filling the water. These orders were well executed, the beach was steep, so that the boats could lie close to the people that were at work, and the Lieutenant from the cutter fired three or four vollies of small arms into the woods before any of the men went on shore, and none of the natives appearing, the waterers landed and went to work. But notwithstanding all these precautions, before they bad been on shore a quarter of an hour, a flight of arrows was discharged among them, one of which dangerously wounded a man that was filling water in the breast, and another stuck into a bareca on which Mr. Pitcairn was sitting. The people on board the cutter immediately fired several vollies of small arms into that part of the wood from which the arrows came, and I recalled the boats that I might more effectually drive the Indians from their ambuscades with grape-shot from the ship' s guns. When the boats and people were on board, we began to fire, and soon after saw about two hundred men rush out of the woods, and run along the beach with the utmost precipitation. We judged the coast to be now effectually cleared, but in a little time we perceived that a great number had got together on the westermost point of the bay, where they probably thought themselves beyond our reach: to convince them therefore of the contrary, I ordered a gun to be fired at them with round shot; the ball just grazing the water rose again, and fell in the middle of them, upon which they dispersed with great hurry and confusion, and we saw no more of them. After this we watered without any farther molestation, but all the while our boats were on shore, we had the precaution to keep firing the ship's guns into the wood on both sides of them, and the cutter which lay close to the beach, as she did before, kept up a constant fire of small arms in platoons at the same time. As we saw none of the natives during all this firing, we should have thought that none of them had ventured back into the wood, if our people had not reported that they heard groans from several parts of it, like those of dying men.
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 574, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/574.html