from the impending danger.  Indeed, the manliness and fortitude displayed by the late Captain Baker on the melancholy occasion of our wreck was such as never before was heard of.  It was not as that of a moment, but his courage was tried for many hours, and his last determination of not crossing from the rock, on which he was every moment in danger of being washed away, was made with more firmness, if possible, than the first.  In fact, during the whole business he proved himself to be a man whose name and last conduct ought ever to be held in the highest estimation by a crew who feel it their duty to ask from the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty that, which they otherwise have not the means of obtaining, that is, a public and lasting record of the lion-hearted, generous, and very unexampled way in which our late noble commander sacrificed his life in the evening of the 23rd of June.’

The above letter was signed by the surviving crew of the Drake.

We need not add that their request was complied with; and a monument erected to the memory of Captain Baker, in the chapel of the Royal Dockyard at Portsmouth.

At the request of the author, a friend, to whom he related the pathetic story of the captain of the Drake, composed the following verses on his untimely and romantic fate:—­

  THE LOSS OF THE DRAKE.

  1.

  There’s a garden full of roses, there’s a cottage by the Dove;
  And the trout stream flows and frets beneath the hanging crags above;
  There’s a seat beneath the tulip-tree, the sunbeams never scorch: 
  There’s jasmine on those cottage walls, there’s woodbine round the porch. 
  A gallant seaman planted them—­he perished long ago;
  He perished on the ocean-wave, but not against the foe.

  2.

  He parted with his little ones beneath that tulip-tree;
  His boy was by his father’s side, his darling on his knee. 
  ’Heaven bless thee, little Emma; night and morning you must pray
  To Him on high, who’ll shield thee, love, when I am far away. 
  Nay, weep not!—­if He wills it, I shall soon be back from sea;
  Then how we’ll laugh, and romp, and dance around the tulip-tree!

  3.

  ’Heaven bless thee, too, my gallant boy!  The God who rules the main
  Can only tell if you and I shall ever meet again. 
  If I perish on the ocean-wave, when I am dead and gone
  You’ll be left with little Emma in a heartless world alone: 
  Your home must be her home, my boy, whenever you’re a man;
  You must love her, you must guard her, as a brother only can.

  4.

  ’There’s no such thing as fear, my boy, to those who trust on high;
  But to part with all we prize on earth brings moisture to the eye. 
  There’s a grave in Ilam Church-yard, there’s a rose-tree marks that
      grave;
  ’Tis thy mother’s:  go and pray there when I’m sailing o’er the wave. 
  Think, too, sometimes of thy father, when thou kneel’st upon that sod,
  How he lived but for his children, for his country, and his God.’