Brenton has thus described the horrible scene on board:—­’Nothing was to be heard but the shrieks of the drowning and the wailings of despair.  The man who would courageously meet death at the cannon’s mouth, or at the point of the bayonet, is frequently unnerved in such a scene as this, where there is no other enemy to contend with than the inexorable waves, and no hope of safety or relief but what may be afforded by a floating plank or mast.  The tremendous shocks as the ship rose with the sea, and fell again on the rocks, deprived the people of the power of exertion; while at every crash portions of the shattered hull, loosened and disjointed, were scattered in dreadful havoc among the breakers.  Imagination can scarcely picture to itself anything more appalling than the frantic screams of the women and children, the darkness of the night, the irresistible fury of the waves, which, at every moment, snatched away a victim, while the tolling of the bell, occasioned by the violent motion of the wreck, added a funereal solemnity to the horrors of the scene.’

The fate of the hapless crew seemed fast approaching to a termination.  When the vessel first struck, signal guns had been fired, in the hope that some aid might be within reach, but none appeared; the guns were soon rendered useless, and when the ship fell on her beam ends, the wreck, with the exception of the poop, was entirely under water.  Here were collected all that remained of the ship’s company, whose haggard countenances and shivering forms were revealed to each other, from time to time, by the glare of the blue lights, and by the fitful moonbeams which streamed from beneath the dark clouds, and threw their pale light upon the despairing group.

    The sea-breached vessel can no longer bear
    The floods that o’er her burst in dread career;
    The labouring hull already seems half filled
    With water, through an hundred leeks distilled;
    Thus drenched by every wave, her even deck,
    Stripped and defenceless, floats a naked wreck. 
          
                                   FALCONER.

Two boats only remained, one of which was useless, her side having been knocked in by the falling of the masts; and the other, the launch, was therefore the sole means of preservation left.  She was already filled with men, but it was found impossible to remove her from her position on the booms; and even if she had floated, she could not have contained above one-fourth of the crew.  For about half an hour she continued in the same position, (the men who were in her expecting every moment that her bottom would be knocked out by the waves dashing against the spars on which she rested,) when suddenly a heavy sea lifted her off the bows clear of the ship.  Three loud cheers greeted her release, and the oars being ready, the men immediately pulled from the wreck, with difficulty escaping the many dangers they had to encounter from the floating spars and broken masts.