The frigate’s boat put us on board.  It blew fresh from the eastward, and I instantly put the helm up, and shaped my course for the old rock.  The breeze soon freshened into a gale; we ran slap before it, but soon found it necessary to take in the top-gallant sails.  This we at last accomplished, one at a time.  We then thought a reef or two in the topsails would be acceptable; but that was impossible.  We tried a Spanish reef, that is, let the yards come down on the cap:  and she flew before the gale, which had now increased to a very serious degree.  Our cargo of wine and tobacco was, unfortunately, stowed by a Spanish and not a British owner.  The difference was very material to me.  An Englishman, knowing the vice of his countrymen, would have placed the wine underneath, and the tobacco above.  Unfortunately it was, in this instance, the reverse, and my men very soon helped themselves to as much as rendered them nearly useless to me, being more than half seas over.

We got on pretty well, however, till about two o’clock in the morning, when the man at the helm, unable to wake the other two seamen to fetch him a drop, thought he might trust the brig to steer herself for a minute, while he quenched his thirst at the wine-cask:  the vessel instantly broached to, that is, came with her broadside to the wind and sea, and away went the mainmast by the board.  Fortunately, the foremast stood.  The man who had just quitted the helm had not time to get drunk, and the other two were so much frightened that they got sober.

We cleared the wreck as well as we could, got her before the wind again, and continued on our course.  But a British sailor, the most daring of all men, is likewise the most regardless of warning or of consequences.  The loss of the mainmast, instead of showing my men the madness of their indulgence in drink, turned the scale the opposite way.  If they could get drunk with two masts, how much more could they do so with one, when they had only half as much sail to look after?  With such a rule of three, there was no reasoning; and they got drunk, and continued drunk during the whole passage.

Good luck often attends us when we don’t deserve it: 

  “The sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,”

as Dibdin says, had an eye upon us.  I knew we could not easily get out of the Gut of Gibraltar without knowing it; and accordingly, on the third day after leaving the frigate, we made the rock early in the morning, and, by two o’clock, rounded Europa Point.  I had ordered the men to bend the cable, and, like many other young officers, fancied it was done because they said it was, and because I had ordered it.  It never once occurred to me to go and see if my orders had been executed; indeed, to say the truth, I had quite as much as I could turn my hand to:  I was at the helm from twelve o’clock at night till six in the morning, looking out for the land; and when I ordered one of the men to relieve me, I directed him how to steer, and fell into a profound sleep, which lasted till ten o’clock; after which I was forced to exert the whole of my ingenuity in order to fetch into the Bay, and prevent being blown through the Gut; so that the bending of the cable escaped my memory until the moment I required the use of the anchor.