INTRODUCTION.
Few more interesting narratives of disasters at sea have ever been given to the world than the journals in which Captain Musgrave records the wreck of the 'Grafton.' A great trial, bravely met, and gallantly surmounted, is therein told with a care and exactness which is at the same time singularly modest. Remembering the difficulties with which the devoted little party were surrounded, what reader can fail to exclaim, in the words which I have quoted on the title-page, 'How shall I admire your heroicke courage, ye Marine Worthies beyond all names of worthinesse!' Indeed, the story of the wreck of the 'Grafton,' and of the sufferings of her crew, would have found a very appropriate resting place in the pages of that famous history of 'Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoueries,' side by side with many another pitiful tale of shipwreck, collected by the worthy 'Richard Hakluyt, Preacher,' to be the delight in all ages of the school-boy as well as the scholar. The same feeling we experience in reading of poor Wills, the hero of the expedition across Australia, 'waiting, like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up,' animates us as we read how the Castaways on the Aucklands used to strain their eyes looking for that relief which never came. We hear the clink of Raynal's anvil far into the night whilst he is engaged forming out of old iron the bolts and nails necessary to repair the crazy 'dingy' for a perilous voyage
