Читать книгу Ralph Osborn, Midshipman at Annapolis. A Story of Life at the U.S. Naval Academy онлайн

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“Hard down!” he shouted to the helmsman. “Let go the life-buoys! Lay down from aloft! Silence fore and aft! Every man to his station! Clear away the lee life-boat! Main clew garnets and buntlines! Weather main and lee cross-jack braces! Clear away the bo’lines! Up mainsail, brace a back!”

The six enlisted men and the coxswain forming the life-boat’s crew jumped into her. Two enlisted men rushed to the boat’s falls and commenced to lower it. They were overanxious; the man at the forward fall threw the coil off the pin; the man at the after fall did the same and both men started to lower the boat rapidly.

“Belay forrud, I’m jammed,” shrieked the man at the after fall. But in the din about the deck, men rushing about, pulling and hauling at the braces, his frightened cry was unheard, and the bow of the life-boat came down rapidly while the stern was still high in the air. In another instant a heavy sea crashed into the life-boat and wrenched it clear from the ship.

In the meantime the executive officer, Lieutenant-Commander Roberts, had rushed up from below and had taken charge. He soon had the other life-boat in the water; it immediately shoved off in the hope of picking up the men who had been swept into the sea. It found but one man. Two others had clutched the pendant of the stern Jacob’s-ladder as it trailed behind and were hauled aboard. But nothing whatever was seen of Midshipman Richards who had fallen overboard nor of the four men of the first life-boat’s crew, nor could the life-boat itself be found.[2]