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Peggy (1765–66)
The brig Peggy sailed from New York in 1765 and reached the island of Faial in the Azores, where it unloaded its cargo and then filled up with wine and brandy for its return trip to North America. The crew left Faial on October 24. They enjoyed five days of good sail before getting battered by a strong storm. It would prove merely a harbinger. For the next month, the Peggy endured fierce gales, one coming on top of the previous in rapid and unrelenting succession. By the end of the month, the Peggy was still afloat, but she had all of her sails torn off but one, and several leaks were discovered in the hold. By the beginning of December, the weather had improved, but the Peggy had been blown far off course, and the damaged state of the ship meant there was little means for steering her aright. The captain, David Harrison, described the ship’s wretched condition: The conflict which our vessel had so long maintained against waves and winds had by this time occasioned her to leak excessively, and our provisions were so much exhausted that we found it absolutely necessary to come to an immediate allowance of two pounds of bread a week for each person, besides a quart of water and a pint of wine a day. The alternative was really deplorable, between the shortness of our provisions and the wreck of our ship. If we contrived to keep the latter from sinking we were in danger of perishing with hunger, and if we contrived to spin out the former with a rigid perseverance of economy for any time, there was but little probability of being able to preserve our ship. Thus on either hand little less than a miracle could save us from inevitable destruction. If we had an accidental gleam of comfort on one hand, the fate with which the other so visibly teemed gave an instant check to our satisfaction and obscured every rising ray of hope with an instant cloud of horror and despair.
Despite their hopeless situation on the open sea, they weren’t alone out there. Other ships skittered along the far horizon, but the relentlessness of the weather made communicating the Peggy’s dire situation impossible. Towering waves kept the Peggy from reaching the other ships, and each successive wave revealed that would-be rescue ships were getting smaller and smaller until they disappeared altogether.
Now five weeks at sea, their food and water depleted, the crew fell into a more desperate state, beginning the slow and excruciating process of withering away from starvation. Despite this, they had to continue to work feverishly at the pumps just to keep the Peggy sailing, so badly damaged was she that neglect would have meant her sinking. All that was left the men now was the store of wine and brandy they had picked up in the Azores. The crew, against Captain Harrison’s wishes, broke into the alcohol and consumed it in vast quantities. Their various states of drunkenness held one thing in common: it made them defiant, mean, and unwilling to listen to the intended calming entreaties of their beleaguered captain. It was only the sighting of another ship, on Christmas morning, that allowed the captain to finally breathe easy. Seeing the sail “suddenly transported [the crew] with the most extravagant sensations of joy.”
There are many accounts of such meetings on the high seas that relate tears from the eyes of the captain seeing fellow seamen afflicted like those of the Peggy. But the captain of the ship now aside the Peggy had an opposite and perhaps far more common reaction. Crew and captain, contending with limited stores of their own, often faced the prospect of having to take on and feed an entirely new crew as a potential death sentence. What if the would be rescue ship should fall under the same distress that befell the Peggy? What then, with an inflated crew and limited space? Harrison, though clearly a man who would have helped had the roles been reversed, nevertheless understood the mean rules of the open sea. He swore to the opposing captain that if he could take on his crew, the men of the Peggy would not eat any of the food on board. They merely wanted safe passage home. The captain steadfastly refused, but he did relent on one point: he would give the crew of the Peggy some bread. He merely had to finish his noon nautical observation first; then he would send the biscuit over.
Harrison, satisfied but extremely exhausted, went belowdecks to rest. He was soon awakened by his excited crew telling him that the other ship was sailing away. The other captain had merely used the pretext of an observation to buy time so he could make his escape. Harrison literally crawled across the deck, watching first the retreating sail of the quick ship and then turning his attention to his deflated crew: “As long as my poor fellows could retain the least trace of him they hung about the shrouds or ran in a state of absolute frenzy from one part of the ship to the other. They pierced the air with their cries, increasing their lamentations as he lessened upon their view and straining their very eyeballs to preserve him in sight, through a despairing hope that some dawning impulse of pity would yet induce him to commiserate our situation and lead him to stretch out the blessed hand of relief.”
