Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/367

Rh This vessel was the Susannah of London, commanded by Captain Thomas Evers, who was engaged in the Virginia trade and was now returning from Virginia to London. He received the Peggy's people with all possible tenderness and humanity. The Susannah proceeded on her voyage, and though in a very shattered condition and so much reduced in provisions that it was necessary to put her people on short allowance, she reached England early in March. The mate, as also James Doud who shot the negro, and one James Warren, a seaman, died during the passage. Lemuel Ashley, Samuel Wentworth, and David Flat, who was to have been shot for food, all survived. Flat continued raving mad during the voyage, but whether he afterwards recovered is not ascertained. When Captain Harrison came on shore, he made an oath to the truth of the preceding melancholy facts in order that the interests of his insurers might be preserved.

In the case of the English ship Barrett, which was wrecked in mid-Atlantic in January, 1821, the method of choosing the man who should die to serve as food was sufficiently novel and ingenious to merit attention. She was a much larger vessel than the Peggy, with a crew of sixteen, and had sailed from St. John, New Brunswick, in command of Captain Faragar, with a cargo of timber for Liverpool. Heavy gales blew her canvas away and strained her hull until it filled with water. Rations were reduced to two ounces of bread and a pint of water a day until this was almost gone. Then a sail was descried, and a brig bowled down to pass within hail,