Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 2.djvu/63

 THE GUABJ)IAK. 47 . The loss of the Guardian was not a public misfortune ^^®® only, it told severely on individuals in the community. Friends of the officers in England, knowing that they would ^JJJSi be in want of many necessaries, sent out supplies by this ^fli^iiAn vessel. Thinking that the gun-room was a safer place than the hold, these precious goods were stored in that part of the ship, but, as it happened, the choice was the very worst that could have been made. When the Guardian, after striking the iceberg, got clear off, she was found to be making water rapidly, and the first object of her commander was to lighten the ship. The live stock and Sir Joseph Banks's " plant-cabin" went overboard to begin with, and ov^JJ^ad then the gun-room was swept. Some of the officers, Collins says, were " great losers.'* All sorts and conditions of people at the settlement, therefore, had good reason to remember the loss of the Guardian.* The moral as well as the material welfare of the colony suffered. Among the persons on board the Guardian was the Eev. John Crowther, who had been appointed at ^' a salary The of eight shillings per diem" to be assistant chaplain of the crowther. settlement.f He was one of those who left the vessel in the long-boat, and was rescued with the master, Mr. Clements, and others by a French vessel, which took them to the Cape. Instead of waiting for an opportunity to continue the voyage to Port Jackson, Mr. Crowther made the best of his way He retiirn» back to England. The circumstances attending his appoint- ment and his return to England are told by the Rev. John Newton, of Olney (the friend and confidant of the poet Cowper), in a series of letters written by him to the Rev. R. Johnson, chaplain at Sydney. The correspondence forms part to lament that the efforts of our several friends, in amply supplying the wants that they concluded must hare been occasioned by an absence of three years, were all rendered ineffectual, the private articles having been among the first things that were thrown overboard to lighten the ship." — Ck)llin8, vol. i, L117. Tench says that " there was scarcely an officer in the colony that dnot his share of private property on board of this richly-freighted ship." t Historical Becords, vol. i, part 2, p. 2W).
 * '* Beside the common share which we all bore in this calamity, we had