The Spanish Galleon

MY name is William Morgan, and I am a lineal descendant of that William Morgan who was a brother of the famous Welsh buccaneer, Henry Morgan. I mention this in no spirit of pride,—quite the contrary,—but because some may choose to trace in these ... Read more

MY name is William Morgan, and I am a lineal descendant of that William Morgan who was a brother of the famous Welsh buccaneer, Henry Morgan. I mention this in no spirit of pride,—quite the contrary,—but because some may choose to trace in these adventures evidence of hereditary tendencies. On the eighteenth day of August, 1886, as the sun was setting, I was floating in the Caribbean Sea. You may mark the place on the map as being approximately N. latitude 15°, and W. longitude 62° from Greenwich; or in other words, between one hundred and two hundred miles west of the French island of Martinique. A chest, well corded but partly filled with water, was all that kept my head above the surface. Without food or drink I had been floating thus since shortly after sunrise of the previous morning. At that time the sloop in which I was voyaging, capsized and sunk in a squall, drowning the negro captain and owner, and his son, who constituted the crew. In this little vessel I was bound for a small uninhabited island known as “Key Seven,” which was in plain sight when the disaster occurred. For two days and a night, without sleep or refreshment, I had been struggling to push the floating chest toward this land. Less