Off Cape HornTo day the weather has been a little better, but now at night the wind is again drawing to the old quarter. We doubled Cape Horn on the 21st, since which we have either been waiting for good or beating against bad weather & now we actually are about the same distance, viz. hundred miles, from our destination; there is however the essential difference of being to the South instead of the East. Besides the serious & utter loss of time & the necessary discomforts of the ship heavily pitching & the miseries of constant wet & cold, I have scarcely for an hour been quite free from sea-sickness. How long the bad weather may last, I know not; but my spirits temper & stomach, I am well assured, will not hold out much longer.
Oooh, I know what's coming soon, the epic near-capsize! I hope you will illustrate your post on the day with the painting "Sorely Tried" by John Chancellor (link below) which gets its title from Fitzroy's journal notes on the event "...when three huge rollers approached, whose size and steepness at once told me that our sea-boat, good as she was, would be sorely tried."
ReplyDeletehttp://darwin-online.org.uk/people/chancellor.html
Thanks Nunatak... I will indeed. Reading the Darwin/Fitroy/Covington entries on a daily basis certainly brings the whole thing alive. One often wonders if they will survive at all!
ReplyDeleteRoger R.