It was however impossible long to continue the labour by which the pumps had been made to gain upon the leak, and as the exact situation of it could not be discovered, we had no hope of stopping it within. In this situation, Mr. Monkhouse, one of my midshipmen, came to me and proposed an expedient that he had once seen used on board a merchant ship, which sprung a leak that admitted above four feet water an hour, and which by this expedient was brought safely from Virginia to London; the master having such confidence in it, that he took her out of harbour, knowing her condition, and did not think it worth while to wait till the leak could be otherwise stopped. To this man, therefore, the care of the expedient, which is called fothering the ship, was immediately committed, four or five of the people being appointed to assist him, and he performed it in this manner: He took a lower studding sail, and having mixed together a large quantity of oakham and wool, chopped pretty small, he stitched it down in handfuls upon the sail, as lightly as possible, and over this he spread the dung of our sheep and other filth; but horse dung, if we had had it, would have been better. When the sail was thus prepared, it was hauled under the ship’s bottom by ropes, which kept it extended, and when it came under the leak, the suction which carried in the water carried in with it the oakham and wool from the surface of the sail, which in other parts the water was

Voyaging Accounts