A Stormy Voyage.

The next voyage we sailed for Auckland from Sharpness with a cargo of salt. the Auckland was well trimmed and when we got out in the salt water we had the whole disc of the Plimsol mark showing, and about 4 inches below it, making a good 10 inches of freeboard to the good. Very different to the sight we appeared when alongside Firth's new wharf at Auckland, when the old rusty hull looked like a submarine with Plimsol mark out of sight below water. We had sunk almost 2ft below the lovely water-line we had left home with.

As we began to run our easting down the weather came on worse, and the ship getting deeper every day got wetter and wetter, the water getting in to the cargo through a broken skylight. The deeper she got, the faster she seemed to sail. We had a marvellous fortnight's run, doing over 300 miles a day for about eight days out of that fortnight. If we had had as good winds during the first part of the passage as we had afterwards we must have broken all records. We had a continuous N.W. to S.W. gale for six or eight weeks with hardly a "let up" for an hour or so, and a hurricane or so by way of a "diversion." We never knew what it was to have a dry bunk, or dry clothes for nearly two months, and often were without any hot meals.

One night and morning I think none of us can ever forget. We were running very heavy with a breeze on port quarter, black as pitch, the glass very low and jumping about like a cat on hot bricks. Plenty of little "blue devils" ("will o' the wisp") were running up and down the "lifts and stays" and the wind was very "fluky." Every now and again an enormous sea would work up from some quarter different to where the wind was blowing, and when these came aboard they just "walked" right over everything and smashed up things pretty thoroughly. I was going aft with a big bottle of cocoa for the mate and myself, and had just got to the companion on the poop, when I saw what looked like an enormous black island towering above us aft with what looked like an iceberg on top of it, or a break in the sky. I yelled "Look out" and ducked for the companion.

The "island" (of water with a crest on it) just walked clean over us from one end to the other, and I found myself swimming down the cabin. The lamps went out as the skylight stove in. The skipper and his wife and steward came out of their bunks, and with the "deadness" of the ship under that weight of water, we all thought the end had come, but when the water stopped pouring down the hatch we managed to get up on deck and found we were still afloat. The man had been washed away from the wheel. We called some hands aft and got her under control and then hunted around to see what damage was done. We found that the sheep pen and its contents had gone, also the two quarter boats, break of poop and forecabin skylight stove in, about half the top bulwarks, and all the aft end of the house washed away—ropes and gear over and through the ports, etc. By the time we had done our inspections between dodging seas it was breaking dawn, and what a sight as the awful darkness gave place to grey half-light!