the chain-pumps could scarcely keep her from foundering, the wreck of the mainmast having caused a most alarming leak, by starting a butt-end under the starboard quarter. In order to save this mast. Lieutenant Croker had exerted himself to get the wreck of the top-mast cut away; but he had not descended from the main-top above five minutes before it went by the board. By the mercy of Providence, however, the fury of the wind and waves at length abated, a thrummed sail was got under the ship’s bottom, as well as hawsers to frap her shattered frame together, and in this state, with only about a dozen guns remaining, she was safely towed to Halifax by the Eagle 74, Captain David Colby.
Upon the above occasion, the crew of the Centaur afforded a striking proof of their high state of discipline; one man only was guilty of resorting to liquor, – either to drown his apprehensions of approaching death, or to gratify with impunity a strong propensity to drunkenness. When prayers and thanksgivings were offered up to the Almighty for their signal deliverance from the waves, the officers, seamen, and marines, almost to a man, were dissolved in tears. But for this hurricane, they would, in all probability, have been amongst the foremost at the battle of Trafalgar.
On her approaching Halifax harbour, the Centaur was supposed to be a French 74, captured by the Eagle, and numerous yachts and boats were soon seen coming out, to welcome the captors of so noble a prize. The first person who got on board the dismasted ship was Commissioner Inglefield, whose miraculous escape from the wreck of the old Centaur, in 1782, We have recorded in Vol. II. Part I., and whose feelings on this occasion may be much more readily conceived than described. He had no sooner reached the quarter-deck, and cast one hasty look around him, than he burst into tears, raised his hands to his forehead, and rushed into Captain Whitby’s cabin, exclaiming “my poor Centaur, at the moment when I left her, presented the same appearance.” Captain Whitby, than whom a better officer was scarcely ever to be found, had not long before been promoted to post rank for saving the Santa Margaritta frigate, under similar cir-
