Shipwreck survivors lived like Robinson Crusoe The way we were
IMAGINE you were one of 270 drowning soldiers and sailors swept into the icy sea after the English East India Company ship Doddington crashed into a rock off the coast of South Africa in the early hours of July 17, 1755, and broke up in 20 minutes.
The shock would have pitched you out of your cot or hammock and you would have stumbled onto the deck to escape the rushing, churning water, only to find that all three masts had collapsed, bringing down an enormous weight of canvas, spars and cordage. Great waves crashed over what was left of the ship, washing hapless humans into the maelstrom.
Captain James Samson and his officers had thought they were far out to sea, but they were well inshore in Algoa Bay, having made slow eastward progress in bad weather since passing Cape Agulhas nine days earlier.
Until then, the sturdy seven-year-old Doddington had made an excellent passage, racing ahead of the rest of the English fleet. The south-west gale that drove her to destruction also snuffed out the lives of 247 passengers and crew, but 20 battered seamen and three soldiers were cast up on an uninhabited speck of land that is now known as Bird Island.
The fact that the ship was carrying silver and a hoard of gold belonging to the British soldier and administrator Robert Clive of Bengal, India, has tended to obscure the drama that took place during the next few months. Fortunately, two witness accounts survive, the most useful being a journal by the third mate, William Webb.
When Webb reached the deck on that winter’s night, he found “everything in the most terrifying condition imaginable; the ship breaking all to pieces and every one crying out to God for mercy, as they were dashed to and fro by the violence of the sea”.
He was subsequently knocked unconscious but managed to reach the island hours later, nursing various injuries including a broken bone in his arm. There he found the chief, second and fifth mates, the carpenter, two quartermasters, a midshipman, four officers’ servants (including Thomas Arnold, who was black), eight seamen and three soldiers. Some were so bruised they couldn’t walk.
As the shocked and dazed men regained their senses, they strove to survive in Robinson Crusoe fashion (the famous novel by Daniel Defoe had been published 36 years earlier).
They searched for clothing, improvised shelters, struggled to make a fire, salvaged food and water and collected the flotsam that had started to drift ashore.
They also surveyed their guano-covered, bird-populated home, which turned out to be a mere 570m wide by 730m long, with a maximum height of 10m above sea level.
More next week.