Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
There is a postscript to the story of this notorious circumnav-
igation. It concerns an incident which happened while the
Speedwell
was rounding the Horn - an incident small in itself but destined to
win immortality. The ship was driven to 61°30′S by violent winds
and seemed quite unable to make any northing. The men were cold,
depressed and scared. The likelihood of ever escaping from that des-
olate region seemed remote. It was a situation in which mariners'
superstition easily gained control of half-crazed minds:
. . . one would think it impossible that anything living could subsist
in so rigid a climate, and indeed we all observed that we had not had
the sight of one fish of any kind since we were come to the south-
wards of the Straits of Le Mair; nor one sea-bird excepting a discon-
solate black albatross, who accompanied us for several days, hovering
about us as if he had lost himself, till Hatley (my second captain) ob-
serving, in one of his melancholy fits, that this bird was always hover-
ing near us, imagined, from his colour, that it might be some ill omen.
That which, I suppose, induced him the more to encourage his super-
stition, was the continued series of contrary tempestuous winds, which
had oppressed us ever since we had got into this sea. But be that as it
would, he, after some fruitless attempts, at length shot the albatross,
not doubting (perhaps) that we should have a fair wind after that . . .
3
Seventy-six years later this would become the incident around
which was constructed the most famous of all poems of the sea:
At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name . . .
In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
