Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/262

NO. 3. what it would do in its present state. This error was occasioned by the motion of the ship causing the balance of the Watch to vibrate somewhat slower, which would affect its going in proportion. It was a part that we had not quite adjusted, as we declared to the Commissioners before I went to Jamaica, so that they as well as ourselves believed it would go somewhat too slow, when at sea: and consequently the more the ship was tossed, the slower it must go, if its going was uniform in other respects. And as we had the most turbulent passage home that was possible; in consequence it went slower than in the voyage out; I supposed that would be about double as much, and accordingly found it so. But to all in the ship it was the greatest miracle that it kept going at all; for I was obliged to place it in the cabin, quite astern, upon the seat or counter; and when we lay to, which we were very often obliged to do, under a balanced mizen, it received such a shock from the breaking of the waves under the counter, that it was just the same as if I had taken the box in my hand and thrown it from one side of the cabin to the other. Had I placed it nearer the midship, it would not have undergone what it did with respect to motion, but then it would have been worse upon another account; for it would have proved impossible for me to have kept the salt water out of it, which was the reason of my placing it where I did. For that, as the Captain told me, was the driest place in the ship; yet it was far from being dry, for sometimes when a sea struck us, the water would spurn [spume] in at every seam, and it was not rare to have two feet of water upon our deck, and six inches in the Captain's cabin. Seven or eight times we sprung a leak, but through God's mercy we as often got it stopped, though sometimes we had a great deal of pumping first, and it was as much as we could do to keep our ship above water. We broke our rudder in a hard gale, but