Read "The Wreck of the Grosvenor, Volume I" by W. Clark Russell online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The weather mended next day, and we made all sail with a fine breeze, steering south-south-west. We had left the Downs on Tuesday, the 22nd of August, and on the 25th we found by observation that we had made a distance of over 900 miles, which, considering the heavy seas the ship had encountered and the depth to which she was loaded, was very good sailing.
However, though we carried the strong north-westerly wind with us all day, it fell calm towards night, then shifted ahead, then drew away north, and then fell calm again. We were now well upon the skirts of the Bay of Biscay, and the heavy swell for which that stretch of sea is famous, did not fail us. All through the night we lay like the ship in the song, rolling abominably, with Coxon in a ferocious temper on deck, routing up the hands to man first the port, and then the starboard braces, bousing the yards about to every whiff of wind, like a madman in the Doldrums, until both watches were exhausted. All this work was put upon us, merely because the skipper was in a rage at the calm, and not caring to rest himself, determined that his crew should not; but for all the good this slueing the yards about did, he might as well have laid the mainyards aback, and waited until some wind really came.