coming in on the deck, she, for some time, stole down imperceptibly. During this business a great part of the crew were at dinner; as soon as they discovered their dangerous situation, they beat to arms to right the ship, but in vain. In a few minutes she fell flat on one side, filled with water, and the guns, shot, &c. falling from the other side, accelerated her descent, and she went to the bottom before any signal of distress could be made.

At this fatal moment there were nearly twelve hundred persons on board, including about two hundred and fifty women, and several children, chiefly belonging to the seamen, who had been permitted to go on board when the ship cast anchor at Spithead, and to remain there till the order for sailing arrived. The people who were on watch upon deck, to the number of two hundred and thirty, were mostly saved by the boats, which were manned with the utmost expedition by the ships near the Royal George, when they observed that the vessel was going down. Their assistance was, however, delayed for some time, by the swell occasioned by the sinking of such a large body, which produced a temporary whirlpool in the water. About seventy others, who rose after the ship disappeared, were also picked up; among these were four lieutenants, eleven women, and the rest seamen.

One of the officers, thus rescued, was Lieutenant Durham, who fortunataly was the officer of the watch, and upon deck, when he observed the vessel going down. He had just time to throw off his coat and scram-ble on the beam, from which, as the ship sunk, he was soon washed, and left floating among men and hammocks. A drowning marine caught him by the waistcoat, and held him fast, so that he was several times drawn under water. It was in vain to reason with the man: he, therefore, clung with his legs round a hammock, with one hand unbuttoned

his waistcoat, and, sloping his shoulders, committed it, together with the unfortunate marine, to the waves. He then got to some of the toprigging, a boat came to him, but he nobly declined the assistance, offered by those on board her, pointing to them where Captain Waghorne was in great danger, and desiring them to go to his relief. The gallant youth was at length taken up, and brought in safety to the shore.

Mr. Henry Bishop, a young man about nineteen years of age, experienced a very extraordinary preser vation. Being on the lower deck at the time of the fatal accident, as the vessel filled, the force of the water hurried him almost insensibly up the hatchway, when, at that instant, he was met by one of the guns, which had fallen from the middle deck. Striking him on his left hand, it broke three of his fingers; he, however, found himself, in a few seconds, floating on the surface of the water, till he was luckily taken up by a boat.

By this sudden and dreadful catastrophe nearly nine hundred persons perished. Among the rest, the loss of Admiral Kempenfeldt, whose flag was then flying on board the Royal George, was universally la mented. He was son of LieutenantColonel Kempenfeldt, a native of Sweden, whose character is preserved in the Spectator, under the name of Captain Sentry. He entered very early into the service of the navy, for which profession he soon discovered uncommon talents. In the year 1757 he was appointed captain of the Elizabeth, and proceeded with Commodore Stevens to the East Indies, where he distinguished himself in three several actions against the French squadron, being always opposed to a ship of superior force; and his abilities were of the utmost importance during the blockade of Pondicherry, as well as the subsequent reduction of Manilla, by Admiral Cornish, in 1761. After serv ing a considerable time in the East

Indies, he obtained leave to return to England. During the peace he constantly spent part of the year in France, not in the pursuit of pleasure, but in search of professional knowledge, in which, if he did not excel, he at least equalled any naval officer in Europe. At the commencement of the American war he was appointed to the Buckingham, and served as first captain, under the Admirals Hardy, Geary, and Darby: and his gallant conduct contributed in no small degree to the capture of the convoy under M. Guichen. His character in private life rendered his acquaintance an enviable acquisition, and as an officer his death was a severe loss to this country.

The Lark sloop victualler, which was lying along-side the Royal George, was swallowed up by the vortex occasioned by the sinking of the vessel, and several of the people on board her perished.

The Royal George, was the oldest first-rate in the service. She was built at Woolwich; her keel was laid down in 1751, and she was hauled out of the dock in July 1755, it being unusual, at that time, to build such large ships on slips to launch. She was pierced for 100 guns, but having recently had two additional ports, including the caronades, mounted 108 guns; she was rather short and high, like all the old first-rates, but sailed so well, that she had more flags on board her than any vessel then in the service. Lord Anson, Admiral Boscawen, Lord Hawke, Lord Rodney, Lord Howe, and several other principal officers, repeatedly commanded in her. She carried the tallest masts and squarest canvass of any Englishbuilt ship in the navy, and originally the heaviest metal; namely, 52, 40, and 28 pounders, but they had been changed, on account of her age, to 40, 32, and 18 pounders.

Several attempts have been made, at different times, but without success, to weigh the Royal George.

The top of her main-mast is said to have been visible in the year 1799.

Sufferings of an Englishman.

In 1614, Sir William Monson was sent to scour the Scotch and Irish seas, which were much infested with pirates nevertheless the next year, 1615, the ordinary passage-boat, sailing from England to Dublin, was taken by a French pirate, but a tempest arising immediately after, they were obliged to let it go again. There happened to be three persons then in it, who were thus left to the mercy of the wind and waves, which carried them between Ireland and Scotland, into the main sea, expecting to be cast away every minute. They had neither victuals nor drink, except some sugar which happened to be in the boat. Upon this they lived, and drank their own urine, till their bodies were so dried up that .they could make no more. In this doleful condition, one of the company, being quite spent with fatigue and misery, died, and was heaved overboard by the remaining two. After a while, the second grew so feeble, that he laid himself along in the boat, ready to yield up the ghost. In this extremity, the third providentially descried a small island towards the extremities of Scotland, It was a great way off, but he encouraged the dying man to rouse himself with hopes of life; and accordingly, upon this good news, he raised himself up, and by and by, the boat was cast upon a rock, and split, the two men escaping up into the island. They found nothing growing there, no grass, tree, or any thing else by which man could procure subsistence; nor any shelter from the weather, except about the middle of the island, where there were two long stones pitched in the ground, and a third laid upon them, like a table, which they judged to have been so placed by some fishermen to dry their fish upon; and under these they slept at night. Fortu

nately the next day they took some sea-mews, which they dried in the wind and sun, and eat them raw. They also caught some sea dogs, and found some eggs in the crevices of the rocks, by the sea-side. Thus they had wherewithal to subsist, so as to keep them from starving. But what they thought most insupportable was thirst, because the place afforded no fresh water, except what fell from the clouds, and was left in certain cavities which time had made in the rock. Neither could they have this at all seasons, because the island, or rather rock, being small and lying low, in stormy weather the waves dashed over it, and filled the pits with water.

Before they had been here long, they built a kind of hut with boards from the ruins of the boat, which served them for a more comfortable shelter than the stones, against the rain and injuries of the wind and weather.

In this condition they lived together for about the space of six weeks, comforting one another, and finding some ease in their common calamity, till at last the poor Englishman being left alone, the burden became almost insupportable; for one day, awaking in the morning, he missed his comrade, and getting up, went calling and seeking all about the island for him. Not being able by any means to find him, he fell into such despair, that he frequently resolved to cast himself down headlong into the sea, and so put a final period to that affliction, of which he had endured but one half, while he had a friend to divide it with him.

What became of his companion he could not guess; whether despair forced him to that extremity, or whether, getting up in the night, he had fallen into the sea, he knew not, but he rather thought that, through want of proper care, he fell from the rock, as he was looking for birds' eggs, for it was very steep on that side.

His loss sorely affected the poor disconsolate survivor, and another affliction soon befel him. His only knife, with which he used to cut up the sea-dogs and sea-mews, having a bloody cloth wrapped round it, was carried away, as he supposed, by some bird of prey. Being now not able to kill any more, he was reduced to the following extremity : with much difficulty he got a great nail out of one of the boards of his hut, which he made shift so to sharpen upon the stones, that it served him instead of a knife.

By degrees his clothes wore out, and when winter came on, and every thing bore a more doleful aspect than before, he endured the greatest misery imaginable; for many times the rock and his hut were so covered with snow, that it was not possible for him to go abroad to provide his food, which extremity put him upon this invention. He thrust out a little stick at the crevice of his hut, and baited it with a little sea-dog's fat, by that means he caught some sea-mews, which he took with his hand from under the snow, and thus kept himself from starving.

In this sad and solitary condition he lived for about eleven months, expecting to end his days there, when providentially a ship came which delivered him out of as great misery as perhaps any man was ever in.

In the year 1616, a Fleming, named Pickman, coming from Drontheim, in Norway, in a vessel laden with boards, was overtaken by a calm, during which the current carried him upon the rock, or island, where the poor Englishman dragged on his miserable existence.

This Pickman was well known in England and Holland for his art and dexterity in getting out of the sea the great guns of the Spanish armada, which was driven upon the coast of Scotland and Ireland in 1588.

'He was now in some danger of

being cast away, and to avoid being wrecked, ordered some of his men to get into the shallop, and to tow off the ship. They having done so, he would needs climb up into a certain rock to look for birds' eggs, As soon as they were got up, they, at some distance, perceived the figure of a man, whence they imagined there were others lurking thereabout, or that this man had made his escape thither to avoid some pirates, who, if not prevented, might surprise their ship. On this, without stopping to relieve him, they returned, with all the haste they could, to their shallop, and so got on board.

The calm continuing, and the current of the sea still driving them upon the island, they were forced to get into the long boat, and to tow the vessel off again. The man whom they had seen before, was, in the mean time, come to the brink of the island, and made signs, with his hands lifted up, entreating them to come nearer; sometimes falling on his knees, and joining his hands together, begging and crying to them for relief.

At first they made some difficulty about going to him, but at length being overcome by his lamentable.

signs, they went nearer the islard, where they saw a stark naked body, black and hairy, a meagre and deformed countenance, with hollow and distorted eyes, which raised such compassion in them, that they endeavoured to take him into the boat; but the rock was so steep thereabout, that it was impossible for them to land, whereupon they went about the island, and came at last to a flat shore, where they took him on board, at the same rock where he had been cast on shore. They saw neither grass nor tree on the island, or any shelter, except the hut which the poor man and his companion had built.

The sun was set ere they got to the ship, when the wind immediately rose, and drove them off from the island.

The master of the ship commiserating his deplorable condition, treated him so well, that within a few days he was quite another creature. He afterwards set him ashore at Londonderry, and some time after saw him again at Dublin; where such as had heard of his singular affliction, gave him money to return to England, his native country.

Blake, the Republican Admiral. BLAKE was one of those great characters that scarcely appear once in an age, and then are only made known by the extraordinary pressure of extraordinary events. Admiral Robert Blake, born in 1589, at Bridgwater, in Somersetshire, was educated at Oxford, and took the degree of batchelor of arts in 1617. In 1640 he was returned to Parliament for Bridgwater, on account of his well-known republican principles and served in the Parliament's army, with great reputation, during the civil wars. But he highly disapproved

of bringing the King to trial; and was frequently heard, with his usual bluntness, to say, he would as freely venture his life to save the king, as ever he did to serve the Parliament. Yet after the king's death he warmly. adhered to the republican party, and, next to Cromwell, was the ablest officer they had. In 1648 he was appointed, with the colonels Dean. and Popham, to command the fleet, and on this new element soon evinc

ed the greatness of his talents; for having pursued the squadron of Prince Rupert to Malaga, and destroyed all the ships except two, he

was constituted sole admiral; and in September, 1652,* defeated the Dutch fleet, commanded by Van Tromp, Ruyter, and De Witt, in a sanguinary engagement off the Downs, in which the Dutch lost four ships of war, and had 2000 men wounded or slain. And again in February, he defeated them in the Channel, when they lost twelve ships of war, and thirty merchantmen. And in July, in the following year, he arrived in time to give such effective aid to the fleet under Monk and Dean, off the North Foreland, that a complete victory was obtained, when the Dutch lost nineteen ships of war. In April, 1653, when Cromwell turned out the Parliament, and assumed the supreme power, Blake kept order in his fleet, and addressed this celebrated short and pithy speech to his officers, "It is not for us to mind state affairs, but to keep foreigners from 'fooling us." Proceeding to the Mediterranean, in 1654, with orders to procure satisfaction for the injuries done to our merchants, he was treated with the most marked respect by the French and Dutch officers at Cadiz, as well as the Algerines, who, taking the English prisoners out of the Sallee rovers, presented them to Blake, in order to purchase his favour, and afterwards willingly concluded a peace with him. But at Tunis, the dey having rashly defyed him, saying, "Here are our castles of Goletto and Porto Ferino; do your worst," Blake in two hours' cannonade, dered the castle defenceless, and burnt with his boats nine Tunisian ships in the road. From Tunis he sailed to Tripoli, and obliged the bashaw to restore the English prisoners. Then returning to Tunis, he

ren

28th September, a decisive victory. 30th November, 1652, Blake's daring and obstinately-maintained conflict with Van Tromp, off Hythe. 18th February, 1653, three days' hard fighting, and decisive victory off La Hogue and the Isle of Wight.

granted them, as a great favor, a peace; and having obliged the knights of Malta to restore the effects taken by their privateer, spread every where such a terror of the British fleet, that most of the princes and the states of Italy sent solemn embassies to the Protector. On the 20th of April, 1657, he made his famous attack on the Spanish ships and galleons, lying strongly posted in the bay of Santa Cruz, in the island of Teneriffe, and sunk or burnt the whole of them. This was thought to be one of the most remarkable actions that ever happened at sea. "It was so miraculous (says the Earl of Clarendon) that all men who knew the place, wondered that any sober man, with what courage soever endowed, would have undertaken it; and they could hardly persuade themselves to believe what they had done; whilst the Spaniards comforted themselves with the belief that they were devils and not men, who had destroyed them in such a manner." was the last great exploit of the renowned Blake. He was consumed with a dropsy and scurvy; and having hastened home that he might yield up his last breath in his native country, as as the ship came into Plymouth Sound he expired.

This

It has been observed, that never man so zealous for a faction was so much respected and esteemed even by the opposite factions. Disinterested, generous, liberal, ambitious only of true glory, dreadful only to his avowed enemies, he forms one of the most perfect characters of that age, and the least stained with those errots and violences which were then so predominent. Lord Clarendon observes that "he was the first man who brought ships to contemn castles on shore, which had ever been thought very formidable, and were discovered by him to make a noise only, and to fright those who could He was rarely be hurt by them. the first that infused that degree of