It will generally be found well worth an officer’s attention to remark in what manner the natives of any coast, however rude they may be, contrive to perform difficult tasks.  Such things may be very simple and easy for us to execute, when we have all the appliances and means of our full equipment at command; but, as circumstances may often occur to deprive us of many of those means, and thus, virtually, to reduce us to the condition of the natives, it becomes of consequence to ascertain how necessity, the venerable mother of invention, has taught people so situated to do the required work.  For example, it is generally easy for a ship of war to pick up her anchor with her own boats; but it will sometimes happen that the launch and other large boats may be stove, and then it may prove of consequence to know how a heavy anchor can be weighed without a boat at all.

We happened, in his Majesty’s ship Minden, to run upon the Coleroon shoal, off the mouth of the great river of that name, about a hundred miles south of Madras.  After laying out a bower anchor, and hauling the ship off, we set about preparing the boats to weigh it in the usual way.  But the master-attendant of Porto Novo, who had come off to our assistance with a fleet of canoes and rafts, suggested to Sir Samuel Hood that it might he a good opportunity to try the skill of the natives, who were celebrated for their expertness in raising great weights from the bottom.  The proposal was one which delighted the Admiral, who enjoyed everything that was new.  He posted himself accordingly in his barge near the spot, but he allowed the task to be turned over entirely to the black fellows, whom he ordered to be supplied with ropes, spars, and anything else they required from the ship.  The officers and sailors, in imitation of their chief, clustered themselves in wondering groups in the rigging, in the chains, and in the boats, to witness the strange spectacle of a huge bower anchor, weighing nearly four tons, raised off the ground by a set of native fishermen, possessed of no canoe larger than the smallest gig on board.

The master-attendant stood interpreter, and passed backwards and forwards between the ship and the scene of operations—­not to direct, but merely to signify what things the natives required for their purpose.  They first begged us to have a couple of spare topmasts and topsail-yards, with a number of smaller spars, such as top-gallant masts and studding-sail booms.  Out of these they formed, with wonderful speed, an exceedingly neat cylindrical raft, between two and three feet in diameter.  They next bound the whole closely together by lashings, and filled up all its inequalities with capstan-bars, handspikes, and other small spars, so as to make it a compact, smooth, and uniform cylinder from end to end.  Nothing could be more dexterous or seaman-like than the style in which these fellows swam about and passed the lashings; in fact, they appeared to be as much at home in the water as our sailors were in the boats or in the rigging.