Page:Full and true account, of the cruel sufferings of the passengers on board the brig Nancy bound for New-York.pdf/8

[ 8 ] this account is published, that he may be known in all parts of them.

The of the inhabitants were never known to be more tenderly affected than by the case of the unfortunate people lately landed here from the brigantine Nancy, capt. Sh, from the HighlandsHighlauds [sic] of Scotland. When they embarked, their numbers were about 280; their allowance was to have been one pound of meal each day, and half a pound of beef each week: but, strange to relate, the whole store of beef amounted only to six barrels for the voyage, in which sixteen weeks were expended. During the whole passage, their principal sustenance was pea meal, mixed with bear meal; for they were denied their favourite aliment (oatmeal) and there was a stock of it on board. Their water was put into foul wine casks, which turned it sour, and occasioned a violent dysentery: about eighty of their number died of this disease: and, incredible to say it, there was sixpence sterling exacted from the living for the liberty of lifting each lifeless corpse over the side, and depositing it in a watery grave. In short, there appear circumstances uncommonly savage and brutal in the treatment of these wretched passengers. The contractors in Scotland are very highly censured; for their miserable manner of victualling the vessel could hardly be accompanied with orders to treat the poor folks with cruelty and insupportable insolences which they loudly complain of.

When their forlorn condition was communicated to the rev. Dr. Auchmuty, rector of Trinity, and to the other clergy of the church of England, they, last Sunday, very pathetically recommended it to their three several congregations, from whose cordial beneficence resulted contributions mounting to upwards of 120 l. and a very respectable sum had the preceeding Sunday been collected fort he same benevolent purpose, from the congregation of the Protestant dissenters. The money has been entrusted to the hands of gentlemen who are applying it in the most effectual way to recruit and relieve these real objects of charity and protection.