At six in the morning, of the 26th, we weighed and set sail, with a light breeze at S.W. The Elgin Indiaman saluted us with three cheers and thirteen guns, and the garrison with fourteen, both which, with the help of our swivels, we returned, and soon after the sea breeze set in at N. by W. which obliged us to anchor just without the ships in the Road.

At this time, the number of sick on board amounted to forty, and the rest of the ship’s company were in a very feeble condition. Every individual had been sick except the sail-maker, an old man between seventy and eighty years of age, and it is very remarkable that this old man, during our stay at this place, was constantly drunk every day: we had buried seven, the Surgeon, three seamen, Mr. Green’s servant, Tupia, and Tayeto his boy. All but Tupia fell a sacrifice to the unwholesome, stagnant, putrid air of the country, and he who from his birth had been used to subsist chiefly upon vegetable food, particularly ripe fruit, soon contracted all the disorders that are incident to a sea life, and would probably have sunk under them before we could have completed our voyage, if we had not been obliged to go to Batavia to refit.

Voyaging Accounts