It was in the course of the winter, after the decease of Bailie M'Lucre,
that the great loss of lives took place, which every body agreed was one
of the most calamitous things that had for many a year befallen the town.
Three or four vessels were coming with cargoes of grain from Ireland;
another from the Baltic with Norawa deals; and a third from Bristol,
where she had been on a charter for some Greenock merchants.
It happened that, for a time, there had been contrary winds, against
which no vessel could enter the port, and the ships, whereof I have been
speaking, were all lying together at anchor in the bay, waiting a change
of weather. These five vessels were owned among ourselves, and their
crews consisted of fathers and sons belonging to the place, so that, both
by reason of interest and affection, a more than ordinary concern was
felt for them; for the sea was so rough, that no boat could live in it to
go near them, and we had our fears that the men on board would be very
ill off. Nothing, however, occurred but this natural anxiety, till the
Saturday, which was Yule. In the morning the weather was blasty and
sleety, waxing more and more tempestuous till about mid-day, when the
wind checked suddenly round from the nor-east to the sou-west, and blew a
gale as if the prince of the powers of the air was doing his utmost to
work mischief. The rain blattered, the windows clattered, the
shop-shutters flapped, pigs from the lum-heads came rattling down like
thunder-claps, and the skies were dismal both with cloud and carry. Yet,
for all that, there was in the streets a stir and a busy visitation
between neighbours, and every one went to their high windows, to look at
the five poor barks that were warsling against the strong arm of the
elements of the storm and the ocean.
Still the lift gloomed, and the wind roared, and it was as doleful a
sight as ever was seen in any town afflicted with calamity, to see the
sailors' wives, with their red cloaks about their heads, followed by
their hirpling and disconsolate bairns, going one after another to the
kirkyard, to look at the vessels where their helpless breadwinners were
battling with the tempest. My heart was really sorrowful, and full of a
sore anxiety to think of what might happen to the town, whereof so many
were in peril, and to whom no human magistracy could extend the arm of
protection. Seeing no abatement of the wrath of heaven, that howled and
roared around us, I put on my big-coat, and taking my staff in my hand,
having tied down my hat with a silk handkerchief, towards gloaming I
walked likewise to the kirkyard, where I beheld such an assemblage of
sorrow, as few men in situation have ever been put to the trial to
witness.
In the lea of the kirk many hundreds of the town were gathered together;
but there was no discourse among them. The major part were sailors'
wives and weans, and at every new thud of the blast, a sob rose, and the
mothers drew their bairns closer in about them, as if they saw the
visible hand of a foe raised to smite them. Apart from the multitude, I
observed three or four young lasses standing behind the Whinnyhill
families' tomb, and I jealoused that they had joes in the ships; for they
often looked to the bay, with long necks and sad faces, from behind the
monument. A widow woman, one old Mary Weery, that was a lameter, and
dependent on her son, who was on board the Louping Meg, (as the Lovely
Peggy was nicknamed at the shore,) stood by herself, and every now and
then wrung her hands, crying, with a woeful voice, "The Lord giveth and
the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord;"--but it was
manifest to all that her faith was fainting within her. But of all the
piteous objects there, on that doleful evening, none troubled my thoughts
more than three motherless children, that belonged to the mate of one of
the vessels in the jeopardy. He was an Englishman that had been settled
some years in the town, where his family had neither kith nor kin; and
his wife having died about a month before, the bairns, of whom the eldest
was but nine or so, were friendless enough, though both my gudewife, and
other well-disposed ladies, paid them all manner of attention till their
father would come home. The three poor little things, knowing that he
was in one of the ships, had been often out and anxious, and they were
then sitting under the lea of a headstone, near their mother's grave,
chittering and creeping closer and closer at every squall. Never was
such an orphan-like sight seen.
When it began to be so dark that the vessels could no longer be discerned
from the churchyard, many went down to the shore, and I took the three
babies home with me, and Mrs Pawkie made tea for them, and they soon
began to play with our own younger children, in blythe forgetfulness of
the storm; every now and then, however, the eldest of them, when the
shutters rattled and the lum-head roared, would pause in his innocent
daffing, and cower in towards Mrs Pawkie, as if he was daunted and
dismayed by something he knew not what.
Many a one that night walked the sounding shore in sorrow, and fires were
lighted along it to a great extent; but the darkness and the noise of the
raging deep, and the howling wind, never intermitted till about midnight:
at which time a message was brought to me, that it might be needful to
send a guard of soldiers to the beach, for that broken masts and tackle
had come in, and that surely some of the barks had perished. I lost no
time in obeying this suggestion, which was made to me by one of the
owners of the Louping Meg; and to show that I sincerely sympathized with
all those in affliction, I rose and dressed myself, and went down to the
shore, where I directed several old boats to be drawn up by the fires,
and blankets to be brought, and cordials prepared, for them that might be
spared with life to reach the land; and I walked the beach with the
mourners till the morning.
As the day dawned, the wind began to abate in its violence, and to wear
away from the sou-west into the norit, but it was soon discovered that
some of the vessels with the corn had perished; for the first thing seen,
was a long fringe of tangle and grain along the line of the highwater
mark, and every one strained with greedy and grieved eyes, as the
daylight brightened, to discover which had suffered. But I can proceed
no further with the dismal recital of that doleful morning. Let it
suffice here to be known, that, through the haze, we at last saw three of
the vessels lying on their beam-ends with their masts broken, and the
waves riding like the furious horses of destruction over them. What had
become of the other two was never known; but it was supposed that they
had foundered at their anchors, and that all on board perished.
The day being now Sabbath, and the whole town idle, every body in a
manner was down on the beach, to help and mourn as the bodies, one after
another, were cast out by the waves. Alas! few were the better of my
provident preparation, and it was a thing not to be described, to see,
for more than a mile along the coast, the new-made widows and fatherless
bairns, mourning and weeping over the corpses of those they loved.
Seventeen bodies were, before ten o'clock, carried to the desolated
dwelling of their families; and when old Thomas Pull, the betheral, went
to ring the bell for public worship, such was the universal sorrow of the
town, that Nanse Donsie, an idiot natural, ran up the street to stop him,
crying, in the voice of a pardonable desperation, "Wha, in sic a time,
can praise the Lord?"