ve her the preference,
while the other put back to Spithead in safety. The mangled remains of
Lieutenant Jenner were two days afterwards found on the beach, and
interred with military honors.

But the Catharine was not the only vessel which suffered in the
tempest. Those who on shore had listened to it raging on the preceding
evening, could not avoid feeling the most lively alarm for the
consequences; and early on the morning of the 18th of November,
several pilots and other persons assembled on the promontory called
the Look-out at Weymouth. Thence they too evidently discovered the
distress and danger of many of the transports.

Soon after, a lieutenant of the navy, residing at Weymouth, applied to
the major of a militia regiment, for a guard to be sent to the Chisell
Bank, as a large ship, supposed to be a frigate, was on shore. This
was immediately granted, and the major himself marched along with a
captain's guard.

The violence of the wind was so great, that the party could with
difficulty reach the place of their destination. There they found a
large merchantman, the AEolus, laden with timber for government, on
shore. Lieutenant Mason of the navy, and his brother, a midshipman,
perished in her, and a number of men who would probably have been
saved had they understood the signals from shore. The men of Portland
who crowded down to the scene of desolation, meant to express, by
throwing small pebbles at them, that they should remain on board, to
make them hear was impossible, because they foresaw the ship would
drive high on the bank. Should that be the case, they might soon leave
her without hazard; and accordingly those who continued on board were
saved, though many of them were dreadfully bruised.

Not far from the same place, the Golden Grove, another merchantman,
was stranded, and in her Dr. Stevens and Mr. Burrows of St. Kitts,
were lost. Lieutenant Colonel Ross, who was also there escaped on
shore. These two vessels had struck against a part of the
Passage-House, almost in the same spot where a French frigate, the
Zenobia, had gone to pieces in 1763.

But the scene of distress was infinitely greater about four miles to
the westward, where, as already related, the Catharine was wrecked.
Along with her, nearly opposite to the villages of Fleet and
Chickerell, the Piedmont and Venus, two transports, and soon after the
Thomas, a merchantman, shared the same fate.

One hundred and thirty-eight soldiers of