X. An account of the remarkable effects of a shipwreck on the mariners; with experiments and observations on the influence of immersion in fresh and salt water, hot and cold, on the powers of the living body

Abstract

The following narrative is submitted to the Royal Society, as containing in itself some curious circumstances, and as having suggested the experiments afterwards to be recited. On the 13th of December, 1790, an American ship was cast away on a sand-bank that lies in the opening of the river Mersey into the Irish Channel. The crew got on a part of the wreck, where they passed the night; and a signal which they made being discovered next day from Hillberry Island, a boat went off, though at a great risk, and took up the survivors. The unfortunate men had remained twenty-three hours on the wreck; and of fourteen, the original number, eleven were still alive, all of whom in the end recovered. Of the three that perished, one was the master of the vessel; another was a passenger who had been a master, but had lost or sold his ship in America; the third was the cook. The bodies of these unfortunate persons were also brought off by the men from Hillberry Island, and were afterwards interred in Saint Nicholas church-yard, amidst a great crowd of spectators. The cook, who was a weakly man, died a few hours before the boat reached the wreck, but the two masters had been long dead, and this added to the sympathy for their loss, a curiosity to inquire into its circumstances and causes. When the following particulars came to be known, this curiosity was increased. Both the masters were strong and healthy men, and one of them a native of Scotland, in the flower of life, early inured to cold and hardships, and very vigorous both in body and mind. On the other hand, several of the survivors were by no means strong men, most of them were natives of the warm climate of Carolina, and what was singular enough, the person among the whole who seemed to have suffered least was a negro.