THE
SHIPWRECK

BY
WILLIAM FALCONER

EMBELLISHED WITH ENGRAVINGS
FROM THE DESIGNS OF
RICHᴰ. WESTALL R.A.

R. Westall R.A. del. Chaˢ. Heath fc.

And,“Oh protect my Wife and Child!” he cries—Canto III.

LONDON;
PRINTED FOR JOHN SHARPE, PICCADILLY.
1819.

THE
SHIPWRECK;

BY
WILLIAM FALCONER.

quæque ipse miserrima vidi,

Et quorum pars magna fui.—Virg. Æn. Lib. ii.

LONDON:
PRINTED FOR JOHN SHARPE,
PICCADILLY,
BY C. WHITTINGHAM, CHISWICK.

M DCCC XV III.

CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS.

The Shipwreck is one of those happy productions in which talent is seen in so exquisite adaptation to the nature of the subject, that it is difficult to determine whether the author is the most indebted to his subject, or the subject to the author. No one who had not passed through the circumstances which Falconer describes, could have painted them as he has done; and of the comparatively few who have had the opportunity of drinking in the fearful inspiration of such scenes, and survived to tell of them, Falconer is the first who appears to have possessed the genius requisite to retain and embody the impression, with the vigour of imagination and the fidelity of memory. It was not more necessary that he should be a poet, than that he should be a seaman. He was eminently both; and the Poem is as perfect in every technical excellence, as it is in respect to the simplicity of its plan, the classical elegance of its composition, and the pathos of its narrative. It is altogether a unique production.

Falconer originally designed the Poem, (as appears from an advertisement prefixed to the second edition, published in 1764,) for the entertainment of “the gentlemen of the sea;” but he complains that they had not formed one tenth of the purchasers. He printed that edition in a cheaper form, expressly with a view to render it more acceptable to the inferior officers. Falconer was thoroughly the seaman; he was warmly attached to the profession, and prided himself more on his nautical science than on his literary talents. The author of the Shipwreck compiled a “Universal Dictionary of the Marine,” a work which cost him years of extraordinary application. The Shipwreck is said to comprise within itself the rudiments of navigation, so as even to claim to be considered as a grammar of the nautical science. The correctness of the rules and maxims laid down in the Poem, for the conduct of a ship under circumstances of perilous emergency, render it extremely valuable to the seaman. The notes originally affixed to the Poem, in explanation of the technical terms, the frequent introduction and euphonous arrangement of which, form so striking a peculiarity of the composition, were thought necessary by the Author, on account of there being, at that time, no modern dictionaries to which he could refer the reader, without forfeiting, by his implied commendation of them, his claim to the professional character he had assumed,—a claim of which he professes himself to be much more tenacious, than of his reputation as a poet.

Fresh-water critics venture out of their element in entering upon a minute examination of such a poem as this. The care with which it appears to have been elaborated, has, however, left little for the invidious notice of criticism. In a few instances, the hand of correction has been injudiciously applied in the editions of the Poem subsequent to its first appearance; it is conjectured, that some of the alterations in the third edition, which are of this nature, are to be attributed to his having left the final revision to his friend Mallet, who, although a poet, was not a seaman. If the style of the Poem is faulty in any respect, it is in that of the too ambitious phraseology, by which it seems to have been Falconer’s effort to sustain the epic dignity of the narrative. Into this fault the models of the day were adapted to seduce any young writer, and the versification he adopted, presents a constant temptation to artificial and inverted forms of expression. Thus, for instance, to weigh anchor, is paraphrased in the following line:—

“Or win the anchor from its dark abode.”

The frequency of the classical allusions, by which also the Poet probably intended to render his work more secundum artem poetical, is justified by their local propriety. As suggested by the surrounding scenery, they seem perfectly natural, and they are introduced, generally, with considerable skill and effect. The most pleasing parts of the Poem, however, are those in which the narration is characterized by all the simplicity of the seaman, rather than by the embellishments of a half-learned taste.

Short and simple are the annals of poor Arion’s history. He was born at Edinburgh, about the year 1730. His father was a poor but industrious barber, who had to maintain a large family, under the distressing circumstance of all his children, with the single exception of William, being either deaf or dumb. Reading English, writing, and a little arithmetic, comprised the whole of Falconer’s education, although he afterwards acquired some knowledge of the French, Spanish, and Italian languages, and, it is added, even of the German. When very young, he entered on board a merchant vessel at Leith, in which he served an apprenticeship. He was afterwards servant to Campbell, the author of Lexiphanes, when purser of a ship, who is stated to have taken considerable pains in improving the mind of the young seaman, and to have subsequently felt a pride in boasting of his scholar. At what time the calamitous event occurred, which furnished the subject of the Shipwreck, has not been ascertained: he was then, it appears, employed in the Levant trade. He continued in the merchant service till 1762. In that year, the Shipwreck made its first appearance, in quarto, dedicated to his Royal Highness Edward, Duke of York, who had hoisted his flag as rear-admiral of the blue, on board the Princess Amelia, of eighty guns, attached to the fleet under Sir Edward Hawke. The Poem immediately took with the public, and Falconer, having, as it is said, at the Duke’s recommendation, quitted the merchant service for the royal navy, was soon after rated a midshipman on board the Royal George.

At the peace of 1763, the Royal George was paid off, and Falconer, in the course of the same year, was appointed purser of the Glory frigate. Soon after this, he married a young lady of the name of Hicks, who survived him. From the Glory, he was, in 1767, appointed to the Swiftsure.

In 1764, he published a new edition of his Poem, in octavo, corrected and enlarged, and, in the following year, a political satire on Lord Chatham, Wilkes, and Churchill, of which it is enough to say, that had Falconer never written any thing but satire, his name would long since have been forgotten. His Universal Dictionary of the Marine, was published in 1769, at which period he was resident in the metropolis, supporting himself chiefly by his literary exertions. Among other resources, he is said to have received a pittance from writing in the Critical Review, under his countryman Mallet. He had received, the preceding year, proposals from his friend Mr. Murray, to enter into company with him as a bookseller, on his taking Mr. Sandby’s business in Fleet-street; it does not appear from what cause he was led to decline the offer. While he was preparing to publish a third edition of the Shipwreck, he obtained the highly advantageous appointment of purser to the Aurora frigate, Captain Lee, which was ordered to carry out Mr. Vansittart and the other Commissioners to India, with the promise of being made their private secretary. The catastrophe is well known. The Aurora frigate sailed on the 30th of September, 1769, left the Cape on the 27th of December, and was heard of no more. It is the most probable opinion, that she foundered in the Mozambique channel, the dangers of which, the captain, in spite, as it is said, of remonstrances, was rash enough, although a stranger to its navigation, to encounter.

In 1773, a black was examined before the East India Directors, who affirmed that he was one of five persons who had been saved from the wreck of the Aurora, and that she had been cast away on a reef of rocks off Mocoa.

To these particulars, for which the public are chiefly indebted to the assiduous researches of the Rev. James Stanier Clarke, it may be added, on the same authority, that Falconer was, in his person, about five feet seven inches in height, of a thin light make, hard featured, and weather-beaten, of blunt and aukward manners, but cheerful, kind, and generous. He was, however, inclined to be satirical, and delighted in controversy: strange characteristics of a man who was a thorough seaman and a poet!

THE
SHIPWRECK.

INTRODUCTION.

’Tis mine, retired beneath this cavern hoar

That stands all lonely on the sea beat shore,

Far other themes of deep distress to sing

Than ever trembled from the vocal string;

DRAWN BY RICHARD WESTALL, R.A. ENGRAVED BY EDWARD PORTBURY.
PUBLISHED BY JOHN SHARPE, PICCADILLY,
OCT. 1, 1819.

INTRODUCTION.

While jarring interests wake the world to arms,

And fright the peaceful vale with dire alarms,

While Albion bids th’ avenging thunder roll

Along her vassal deep from pole to pole;

Sick of the scene, where war with ruthless hand

Spreads desolation o’er the bleeding land;

Sick of the tumult, where the trumpet’s breath

Bids ruin smile, and drowns the groan of death;

’Tis mine, retired beneath this cavern hoar,

That stands all lonely on the sea-beat shore,

Far other themes of deep distress to sing

Than ever trembled from the vocal string;

A scene from dumb Oblivion to restore,

To Fame unknown, and new to epic lore:

Where hostile elements conflicting rise,

And lawless surges swell against the skies,

Till Hope expires, and Peril and Dismay

Wave their black ensigns on the watery way.

Immortal train! who guide the maze of song,

To whom all science, arts, and arms belong,

Who bid the trumpet of eternal Fame

Exalt the warrior’s and the poet’s name,

Or in lamenting elegies express

The varied pang of exquisite distress;

If e’er with trembling hope I fondly strayed

In life’s fair morn beneath your hallowed shade,

To hear the sweetly mournful lute complain,

And melt the heart with ecstasy of pain,

Or listen to the enchanting voice of love,

While all Elysium warbled through the grove;

Oh! by the hollow blast that moans around,

That sweeps the wild harp with a plaintive sound;

By the long surge that foams through yonder cave,

Whose vaults remurmur to the roaring wave;

With living colours give my verse to glow,

The sad memorial of a Tale of Woe!

The fate, in lively sorrow, to deplore

Of wanderers shipwrecked on a leeward shore.

Alas! neglected by the sacred Nine,

Their suppliant feels no genial ray divine

Ah! will they leave Pieria’s happy shore,

To plough the tide where wintery tempests roar?

Or shall a youth approach their hallowed fane,

Stranger to Phœbus, and the tuneful train?

Far from the Muses’ academic grove,

’Twas his the vast and trackless deep to rove;

Alternate change of climates has he known,

And felt the fierce extremes of either zone;

Where polar skies congeal th’ eternal snow,

Or equinoctial suns for ever glow,

Smote by the freezing, or the scorching blast,

‘A ship-boy on the high and giddy mast,’

From regions where Peruvian billows roar,

To the bleak coasts of savage Labrador;

From where Damascus, pride of Asian plains,

Stoops her proud neck beneath tyrannic chains,

To where the Isthmus, laved by adverse tides,

Atlantic and Pacific seas divides:

But while he measured o’er the painful race

In fortune’s wild illimitable chace,

Adversity, companion of his way,

Still o’er the victim hung with iron sway,

Bade new distresses every instant grow,

Marking each change of place with change of woe;

In regions where th’ Almighty’s chastening hand

With livid pestilence afflicts the land,

Or where pale famine blasts the hopeful year,

Parent of want and misery severe;

Or where, all-dreadful in th’ embattled line,

The hostile ships in flaming combat join,

Where the torn vessel, wind and waves assail,

Till o’er her crew distress and death prevail.—

Such joyless toils, in early youth endured,

Th’ expanding dawn of mental day obscured,

Each genial passion of the soul oppressed,

And quenched the ardour kindling in his breast:

Then censure not severe the native song,

Though jarring sounds the measured verse prolong,

Though terms uncouth offend the softer ear,

Yet truth, and human anguish deign to hear:

No laurel wreaths these lays attempt to claim,

Nor sculptur’d brass to tell the poet’s name.

And lo! the power that wakes th’ eventful song,

Hastes hither from Lethean banks along;

She sweeps the gloom, and, rushing on the sight,

Spreads o’er the kindling scene propitious light;

In her right hand an ample roll appears,

Fraught with long annals of preceding years,

With every wise and noble art of man

Since first the circling hours their course began;

Her left a silver wand on high displayed

Whose magic touch dispels oblivion’s shade:

Pensive her look; on radiant wings that glow

Like Juno’s birds, or Iris’ flaming bow,

She sails; and swifter than the course of light

Directs her rapid intellectual flight:

The fugitive ideas she restores,

And calls the wandering thought from Lethe’s shores;

To things long past a second date she gives,

And hoary Time from her fresh youth receives;

Congenial sister of immortal Fame,

She shares her power, and Memory is her name.

O first-born daughter of primeval Time!

By whom transmitted down in every clime

The deeds of ages long elapsed are known,

And blazoned glories spread from zone to zone;

Whose magic breath dispels the mental night,

And o’er th’ obscured idea pours the light;

Say, on what seas, for thou alone canst tell,

What dire mishap a fated ship befel,

Assailed by tempests, girt with hostile shores

Arise! approach! unlock thy treasured stores!

Full on my soul the dreadful scene display,

And give its latent horrors to the day.

FIRST CANTO:

THE SCENE OF WHICH LIES NEAR THE CITY OF CANDIA.

TIME,—ABOUT FOUR DAYS AND AN HALF.

ARGUMENT.

I. Retrospect of the Voyage—Arrival at Candia—State of that Island—Season of the Year described.—II. Character of the Master and his Officers, Albert, Rodmond, and Arion—Palemon, Son to the Owner of the Ship—Attachment of Palemon to Anna, the Daughter of Albert.—III. Noon—Palemon’s History.—IV. Sunset—Midnight—Arion’s Dream—Unmoor by Moonlight—Morning—Sun’s Azimuth taken—Beautiful Appearance of the Ship, as seen by the Natives from the Shore.

THE
SHIPWRECK

CANTO I.

O bliss supreme: where Virtue’s self can melt

With joys, that guilty Pleasure never felt;

Formed to refine the thought with chaste desire,

And kindle sweet Affection’s purest fire.

DRAWN BY RICHARD WESTALL, R.A. ENGRAVED BY WILLIAM FINDEN.
PUBLISHED BY JOHN SHARPE, PICCADILLY,
OCT. 1, 1819.

CANTO I.

I. A ship from Egypt, o’er the deep impelled

By guiding winds, her course for Venice held.

Of famed Britannia were the gallant crew,

And from that isle her name the vessel drew;

The wayward steps of Fortune they pursued,

And sought in certain ills imagined good:

Though cautioned oft her slippery path to shun,

Hope still with promised joys allured them on;

And, while they listened to her winning lore,

The softer scenes of peace could please no more:

Long absent they from friends and native home

The cheerless ocean were inured to roam;

Yet Heaven, in pity to severe distress,

Had crowned each painful voyage with success;

Still to compensate toils and hazards past

Restored them to maternal plains at last.

Thrice had the sun to rule the varying year

Across the equator rolled his flaming sphere,

Since last the vessel spread her ample sail

From Albion’s coast, obsequious to the gale;

She o’er the spacious flood from shore to shore

Unwearying wafted her commercial store;

The richest ports of Afric she had viewed,

Thence to fair Italy her course pursued;

Had left behind Trinacria’s burning isle,

And visited the margin of the Nile:

And now, that winter deepens round the Pole,

The circling voyage hastens to its goal;

They, blind to Fate’s inevitable law,

No dark event to blast their hope foresaw,

But from gay Venice soon expect to steer

For Britain’s coast, and dread no perils near;

Inflamed by Hope, their throbbing hearts elate

Ideal pleasures vainly antedate,

Before whose vivid intellectual ray

Distress recedes, and danger melts away:

Already British coasts appear to rise,

The chalky cliffs salute their longing eyes;

Each to his breast, where floods of rapture roll,

Embracing strains the mistress of his soul;

Nor less o’erjoyed, with sympathetic truth,

Each faithful maid expects th’ approaching youth:

In distant souls congenial passions glow,

And mutual feelings mutual bliss bestow—

Such shadowy happiness their thoughts employ,

Illusion all, and visionary joy!

Thus time elapsed, while o’er the pathless tide

Their ship through Grecian seas the pilots guide.

Occasion called to touch at Candia’s shore,

Which, blest with favouring winds, they soon explore;

The haven enter, borne before the gale,

Despatch their commerce, and prepare to sail.

Eternal powers! what ruins from afar

Mark the fell track of desolating war!

Here arts and commerce with auspicious reign

Once breathed sweet influence on the happy plain;

While o’er the lawn, with dance and festive song,

Young Pleasure led the jocund Hours along;

In gay luxuriance Ceres too was seen

To crown the vallies with eternal green:

For wealth, for valour, courted and revered,

What Albion is, fair Candia then appeared.—

Ah! who the flight of ages can revoke? }

The free-born spirit of her sons is broke, }

They bow to Ottoman’s imperious yoke; }

No longer Fame their drooping heart inspires,

For stern Oppression quenched its genial fires:

Though still her fields, with golden harvests crown’d,

Supply the barren shores of Greece around,

Sharp penury afflicts these wretched isles,

There Hope ne’er dawns, and Pleasure never smiles;

The vassal wretch contented drags his chain,

And hears his famished babes lament in vain;

These eyes have seen the dull reluctant soil

A seventh year mock the weary labourer’s toil.—

No blooming Venus, on the desert shore,

Now views with triumph captive gods adore;

No lovely Helens now with fatal charms

Excite th’ avenging chiefs of Greece to arms;

No fair Penelopes enchant the eye,

For whom contending kings were proud to die;

Here sullen Beauty sheds a twilight ray,

While Sorrow bids her vernal bloom decay;

Those charms, so long renowned in classic strains,

Had dimly shone on Albion’s happier plains!

Now, in the southern hemisphere, the sun,

Through the bright Virgin, and the Scales, had run,

And on th’ ecliptic wheeled his winding way

Till the fierce Scorpion felt his flaming ray.

Four days becalmed the vessel here remains,

And yet no hopes of aiding wind obtains;

For sickening vapours lull the air to sleep,

And not a breeze awakes the silent deep:

This, when th’ autumnal equinox is o’er,

And Phœbus in the north declines no more,

The watchful mariner, whom Heaven informs,

Oft deems the prelude of approaching storms.—

No dread of storms the master’s soul restrain,

A captive fettered to the oar of gain:

His anxious heart, impatient of delay,

Expects the winds to sail from Candia’s bay,

Determined, from whatever point they rise,

To trust his fortune to the seas and skies.

Thou living ray of intellectual fire,

Whose voluntary gleams my verse inspire,

Ere yet the deepening incidents prevail,

Till roused attention feel our plaintive tale;

Record whom chief among the gallant crew

Th’ unblest pursuit of fortune hither drew:

Can sons of Neptune, generous, brave, and bold,

In pain and hazard toil for sordid gold?

They can! for gold, too oft with magic art,

Can rule the passions and corrupt the heart:

This crowns the prosperous villain with applause,

To whom in vain sad Merit pleads her cause;

This strews with roses Life’s perplexing road,

And leads the way to Pleasure’s soft abode;

This spreads with slaughtered heaps the bloody plain,

And pours adventurous thousands o’er the main.

II. The stately ship, with all her daring band,

To skilful Albert owned the chief command:

Though trained in boisterous elements, his mind

Was yet by soft humanity refined;

Each joy of wedded love, at home, he knew,