’In this state they continued till the 5th of April following.  On the morning of that day they were in the woods as usual, searching for food and water, as well as their weakness permitted, when their attention was aroused by a sound which they thought was distant thunder; but looking towards the sea, they saw a ship in the offing, which had just fired a gun.  Their joy at this sight may be more easily imagined than described; they immediately fell on their knees, and thanked God for His goodness, in thus sending deliverance when least expected; then, hastening to the shore, they saw a boat coming towards them.  As the boat could not approach the shore without great danger, the mate, being a good swimmer, and stronger than his companions, plunged into the sea, and providentially escaped a watery grave at the moment when deliverance was at hand.  His companions crawled out further on the rocks, and, by the great exertions of the crew, were taken into the boat, and soon found themselves on board the Surrey, commanded by Captain Raine, by whom they were treated in the kindest manner, and their health and strength were speedily restored.’

Mr. Montgomery, the editor, observes, ’there is some incongruity in these two narratives, which more minute particulars might reconcile.’  We have noticed them.  Mr. Bennet received the account verbally, and may be mistaken in some points, but there is little doubt of its being substantially correct.

This melancholy history supplies an additional and complete answer to Bligh’s doubts of men feeding on each other to preserve existence.

ENDNOTES: 

[1] The discovery of this island is owing to Fernandez de Quiros in 1606, which he named La Sagittaria, Some doubts were at first entertained of its identity with Otaheite, but the small difference of a few miles in latitude, and about two degrees of longitude, the description as to size, the low isthmus, the distance from it of any other island at all similar, and above all, the geographical position—­all prove its identity—­although Quiros calls it, what it certainly is not, a low island.

[2] A Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean, Appendix, pp. 336, 342.

[3] Cook appears not to have exercised his usual judgement in estimating the population of this island.  After stating the number of war-canoes at seventeen hundred and twenty, and able men to man them, at sixty-eight thousand eight hundred, he comes to the conclusion that the population must consist of two hundred and four thousand souls; and reflecting on the vast swarms which everywhere appeared, ‘I was convinced,’ he says, ‘that this estimate was not much, if at all, too great.’

[4] The words within brackets are in the original despatch.

[5] He was born in the Isle of Man, his father being Deemster of Man, and Seneschal to the Duke of Athol.