Island of the Lost by Joan Druett

Author:Joan Druett
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2007-02-04T05:00:00+00:00

JAMES MAHONEY, WRECKED WITH THE

SHIP INVERCAULD. MAY 10th ‘64.

It was August 12, 1864, almost exactly three months from the time when the Invercauld had foundered.

FOURTEEN

Equinox

Sunday, August 14, 1864,” wrote Captain Musgrave. “Since last Sunday we have had what we call very fine weather—that is to say, we have had no gales; but otherwise the weather has been very variable, with frequent showers of rain and snow.”

The men had taken advantage of the moderate days to go seal hunting, and had managed to kill a yearling, plus two cows, which, when slaughtered, proved to be in calf. They were also glad to see Royal Tom, who had been absent for what felt like a very long time. It was a good augury, Musgrave hoped—perhaps all the sea lions would come back, it evidently being close to calving time.

Otherwise, he felt “unaccountably fidgety and uneasy, as if I were every moment expecting some extraordinary occurrence,” perhaps because it was the nine-month anniversary since their departure from Sydney. “Yesterday I got to where I could see well down the harbour, and sat on a rock all day, expecting to see a vessel coming in,” he wrote. “This morning I walked all about the beach, expecting the same thing.” He knew he was only tormenting himself—“I have no right to expect such an event for at least two months to come”—but he couldn’t help it.

Determined, for once, to look on the bright side, Thomas Musgrave then meditated that having no gales was a very pleasant change indeed. The previous Sunday he had recorded a series of violent storms, including a hurricane that had blown so hard the surf had been dashed over the roof of the house. “Had it not been well built and secured it would inevitably have been blown down, and we should have been house-wrecked as well as shipwrecked,” he commented with uncharacteristic dry humor.

To his surprise and gratification, too, the wreck of the Grafton had survived the tempest almost unchanged, the only part to come adrift being part of her decks. She had held together through the storms of winter, and now even this latest terrific gale had apparently had little effect.

Realizing that she must have been very strongly built gave Musgrave the idea of heaving her over onto her other side to have a look at her bottom, hoping to find that “it might not be impossible to make something of her after all,” and maybe even get her into a fit state to sail to New Zealand.

It was an extremely ambitious proposal. Heaving the wreck over would involve wrapping heavy chains about what was left of the main mast, and then finding a pair of strong blocks, one to be attached to the chains, the other to be securely fastened to a belaying point on shore. In a shipyard this belaying point was a sturdy post called a heaving post, built into the timbers of a wharf, but the Grafton castaways would be forced to use a well-rooted tree.

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