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[338]
The captain joined me at the breakfast table, and said, as he sat down: “Well, General, I think I made quite a mistake yesterday in my observation.
I am inclined to think I am twenty miles farther east than the observation showed.”
“Well,” I said, “that is a good mistake, because it gives Frying-Pan Shoals a wide berth.”
A few minutes later, and while I was still seated, I felt the vessel strike something and apparently pass over it, with a peculiar g rating sound which everybody who has been at sea knows.
I thought we must have struck a sunken wreck or a whale.
The captain immediately rushed up the companion-way, and I followed him. Upon reaching the deck and looking around we saw land within five or six miles of us. Evidently we were where we ought not to be. I then heard the captain give the order, “Let go port anchor.”
“Port anchor, sir.”
“Yes ; let go,” and immediately the port anchor was ordered over.
It struck bottom almost instantly, showing that the vessel was aground.
The whole thing had been so easy and so quiet that it substantially disturbed no one on the ship.
I stopped into the captain's room and motioned him to follow me.
“ We are on the shoals, Captain?”
“ Yes.”
“ Whereabouts?”
He put his thumb on the chart, a condensed chart of the whole coast, covering several miles, and said: “We are here.”
“ But exactly where, Captain?”
“I don't know.”
“ But you told me this morning that you thought you were several miles further east than your calculation showed you to be, and you were far enough east by that.
Now, how came you here?”
“ I cannot tell, General.”
“Have you been on deck before this morning, Captain?”
“No, sir; I went directly from my berth to the breakfast table.”
“ Do you know what is the state of the tide?”
“I do not, General.”
“ Can you find out?”
“ I can by examining the nautical almanac.”
I stepped to the door and called one of my staff, Captain Davis, and said: “Davis, we are ashore here, and I should like to know ”
A. M. Thayer and Co. 1892.
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