Dampier's Voyages

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Here they discovered that the bottom of the St. George was in many places eaten like a Honey-comb; insomuch that the firm Plank was no thicker than an old Sixpence; Nay, in some places in the Hold, we could thrust our Thumbs quite through with ease. This perilously firm Plank they tinkered up with nails...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Here they discovered that the bottom of the St. George was in many places eaten like a Honey-comb; insomuch that the firm Plank was no thicker than an old Sixpence; Nay, in some places in the Hold, we could thrust our Thumbs quite through with ease. This perilously firm Plank they tinkered up with nails and oakum. On September 2, 1704, Dampier fell out with Clipperton, his mate. Clipper- ton was an unruly man, but a bold sailor; and, being fearful of sailing in a ship so crazy as the Sf. George, and eager to strike a stroke for himself, he got together twenty- one hands, seized one of the prize barks, and ran away with her. George Shelvocke, who had afterwards some experience of Clipperton, alleges that he took with him Dampier's commission; but this is disproved by Dampier's own words. He speaks of having the Queer's Orders after Clipperton had sailed. Three weeks after Clipperton's defection, the St. George, with the second prize bark, sailed out to attack the Manilla galleon. Dampier was now in command of sixty-four men and boys, most of them mutinous, and some of them drunken. On the 6th December, 1704, they sighted and attacked the galleon, but were beaten off. They seem to have lost no one, but the St. George received very serious injury. The failure gave occasion for a new defection. Funnell, with thirty-four others, resolved to go for India in the prize bark; which resolution they put in practice on the ist February, 1705. After several traverses, they reached the Dutch East Indian Islands, from which Funnell and seventeen others came to England, where they arrived in August, 1706. Dampier's subsequent adventures, with the twenty-nine (or twenty-seven) men left to him, are obscure; but it appears that he plundered the town of Puna, abandoned the old St. George, and ...