The loss of the Halsewell East-Indiaman, Capt. Richard Pierce. This rich laden ship (outward bound) was wreck'd off Seacombe in the Isle of Purbeck in Dorsetshire, on the 6th of Jan 1786, by unkown
The Halsewell was an East-Indiaman of 776 tons, launched in 1778. She had three decks, a length of 139.5 feet (42.5 m) and a breadth of 36 feet (11 m). She was under the command of Captain Richard Pierce on her way to Madras.
She had sailed down the Thames at New Year 1786, but problems began as she approached the Dover Strait on Monday 2 January. Snow and ice fouled the topsails and also rendered the mainsail virtually useless. On Tuesday, as the ship lay at anchor, a strong gale from the east-north-east was threatening to drive her into the Kentish cliffs. Cables were cut and the Halsewell made for open sea. The wind intensified and turned to the south during the evening; by now the gun-deck was awash. Things got worse on Wednesday– the water in the hold was now five feet deep, the hull was leaking, and ‘all the pumps were set to work’. The mizzenmast was cut down and further attempts were made ‘to wear the ship’. The coxswain, and four others drowned in a desperate bid to turn the ship from the wind.
The wreck of the 'Halsewell', Indiaman, 1786 ( shows the roundhouse- the passenger saloon under the poop deck), by Thomas Stothard, 1786
By eight o’clock on Wednesday morning, the ship had been pointed eastwards and, for a few hours, the Halsewell laboured in heavy seas in Lyme Bay. Two feet of the water in the hold was pumped out and it was impossible to continue towards to India, but the crew bent another fore-sail, raised a ‘jury main-mast, and set a top-gallant-sail for a main-sail’ and aimed to limp into Portsmouth for repairs. Progress was painfully slow – twelve hours later the ship successfully passed Portland Bill, but the immediate objective was to round the next treacherous trio of rocky headlands at Anvil Point, Durlston Head and Peveril Point with a view to anchoring in relative shelter in Studland Bay. Instead, at eleven o’clock that night, the sky cleared and the great promontory of St Alban’s Head lay a mile and half to the leeward. Sails were drawn in immediately and the sheet-anchor dropped. Captain Pierce knew they didn't have much time left until they ran aground somewhere.
The Loss of an East Indiaman (formerly Loss of a Man of War), depicting the shipwreck of the Halsewell East Indiaman on 6 January 1786, off the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset, England, by Joseph Mallord William Turner
Cannon were fired to alert those onshore to their predicament. Captain Pierce put his efforts into trying to preserve his daughters and the other young ladies. At the moment of impact – at two o’clock in the morning of the Friday – those standing in the cuddy were propelled into the overhanging deck above.
Captain Pierce, prayedthat the stricken ship would hold together until dawn, when rescue might come and escape routes could be seen. The hull, however, was splitting apart. A seaman named Burmaster climbed through a skylight in the roundhouse and waved a lantern, by which Henry Meriton noticed that a spar from the side of the ship was resting on the rocks. Meriton attempted to escape but was carried off by a surging wave, although it then washed him up onto a shelf at the back of a cavern. The remaining officers took refuge on the upper quarter-gallery on the poop deck. Meanwhile, 27 men found refuge on what is now known as the Halsewell Rock. Because it was low tide, and they feared being washed away, the seamen struggled to escape from there to join Meriton in the cavern and several ‘perished in their efforts’. Those who found refuge had escaped immediate death but they had to endure the cold and perpetual dousing with icy spray.
Loss of the East Indiaman Halsewell by Robert Smirke, before 1845
Their one stroke of luck was that Garland and his quarrymen came from a nearby quarry and were heading to the cliff-top with ropes; the problem, however, was that neither boats nor ropes could reach them. Their only escape was to crawl along an exposed ledge ‘scarcely as broad as a man’s hand’. Then they had to turn a corner and climb vertically.
Shipwrecked soldiers, newly recruited for the East India Company, were particularly saddened to lose their young drummer boy; washed seawards, he was then held in the same spot by counter-currents, until he succumbed. Likewise they could only watch as one Thomas Jeane was washed in and out by the sea for seven hours before he drowned.
The Wreck of the Halsewell, by Hubert E. Beavis (b.1925)
The quarrymen carried on pulling up seamen and soldiers for the whole day and returned at dawn on Saturday 7 January, for the last man – William Trenton, a soldier – who had managed to withstand extreme hypothermia. The muster of men alive at Eastington Farm reached just 74 out of the 242 who had set sail. In all, 88 had been recovered but fourteen died in the process. All the ship’s documentation was lost and cargo and debris floated across a wide area, including the remains of a single sheep – the only sign of all the livestock that had been carried.
