LOSS OF THE MELVILLE CASTLE.


Many and great are the dangers to which those who lead a seafaring life
are exposed. The lightning's flash may strike a ship when far away from
port, upon the trackless deep, or the sudden bursting of a particular
kind of cloud, called a waterspout, may overwhelm her, and none be left
to tell her fate. But of all the perils to which a ship is liable, I
think that of her striking on a sand-bank, or on sunken rocks is the
greatest. There must be men and women now living on the Kentish coast,
in whose memory the disastrous wreck of the Melville Castle, with all
its attendant horrors, is yet fresh. It is a sorrowful tale, doubly so,
inasmuch as acts of imprudence, and still worse, of obstinacy, may be
said to have occasioned the loss of four hundred and fifty lives.

In the first place, the Melville Castle, or as I suppose we should call
her the Vryheid, was in a very decayed state; she had been long in the
East India Company's service, and was by them sold to some Dutch
merchants, who had her upper works tolerably repaired, new sheathed and
coppered her, and resold her to the Dutch government, who were then in
want of a vessel to carry out troops and stores to Batavia.

The Melville Castle was accordingly equipped for the voyage, painted
throughout, and her name changed to the Vryheid. On the the morning of
November, 1802, she set sail from the Texel, a port on the coast of
Holland, with a fair wind, which lasted till early on the following day,
when a heavy gale came on in an adverse direction.

The captain immediately had the top-gallant masts and yards struck to