st, and main
topsail-yard. We immediately bore down towards her, and found that
this disaster had arisen from the badness of her iron-work, as all the
chain plates to windward had given way, in consequence of her having
fetched a deep roll. This accident proved the more unfortunate for the
Wager, as her captain had been on board the Gloucester ever since
the 31st March, and the weather was now too severe to permit of his
return. Nor was the Wager the only ship in the squadron that suffered
in this tempest; for next day, a signal of distress was made by the
Anna pink, and on speaking her, we found she had broken her fore-stay
and the gammon of her boltsprit, and was in no small danger of all her
masts coming by the board; so that the whole squadron had to bear away
to leeward till she made all fast, after which we again hauled upon a
wind.

After all our solicitude, and the numerous ills of every kind, to
which we had been incessantly exposed for near forty days, we now
had great consolation in the hope that our fatigues were drawing to
a close, and that we should soon arrive in a more hospitable
climate, where we should be amply rewarded for all our past toils and
sufferings; for, towards the latter end of March, by our reckoning, we
had advanced near ten degrees to the west of the westermost point
of Terra del Fuego; and, as this allowance was double what former
navigators had thought necessary to compensate the drift of the
western current, we esteemed ourselves to be well advanced within
the limits of the Southern Pacific, and had been, ever since then,
standing to the northward, with as much expedition as the turbulence
of the weather and our frequent disasters would permit. On the 13th of
April, in addition to our before-mentioned westing, we were only one
degree of latitude to the southward of the western entrance into the
Straits of Magellan, so that we fully expected in a very few days to
experience the celebrated tranquillity of the Pacific Ocean. But these
were only delusions, which served to render our disappointment more
terrible. On the morning of the 14th, between two and three o'clock,
the weather, which till then had been hazy, fortunately cleared up,
and the pink made a signal for seeing the land right a-head; and, as
it was only two miles distant, we were all under the most dreadful
apprehensions of running on shore; which, had either the wind blown
from its usual quarter, with its wonted violence, or