Ships were lost during these dark voyages, and said to have had their crews drowned; at any rate, their bodies were washed ashore some places, and in some accounts it is stated that the ship was seen to go down in the storm and all on board were lost. The master of the ship in the instance which I shall presently state, says he was at no time in greater danger than at this storm; but, says he, though I thought I had seen the sea and wind beat me ashore, yet I cannot recollect that there was any danger which I cannot outlive; but this I had, that I had many of my people so ill as to fear death; yet one thing made me easy, which was, that, being so many months ago, and out of seven hundred souls, I could never get any of them to take more than one glass of ale, and three pints of wine with me, and upon that only we sailed, though never so sick. The ship in which the master was was driven on the coast of Ireland by a violent storm, and cast upon a beach, where the master got ashore and the people remained in the ship. The master went up about ten miles into the country, and left the ship with about two hundred hands in her; as soon as they were left alone the men got a notion of their danger, and of what they had seen their comrades suffer; however, they all agreed together that they would not stir from the ship, though they could not make a fire to warm themselves; so cold was the weather, and so terrible the tempest they had seen. They stood in this miserable condition four or five days; but having eat up all their provision, they began to be in want of water; now the master, when he parted, had given them directions how to find water in plenty, but, says he, they cannot find it now; and, if they had found it, they could not come at it, for the shore is so high and the weather so stormy. When they found that they had nothing to comfort them but the expectation of being yet looked for by the ship, which they could not hope should come in search of them, as they did not know but she might have been separated from them in the storm, so they agreed that the best way was to burn the ship, and so that one part might not be in want of what the rest had, they went and burnt it down to the water's side; however, this made them more eager to get at the water, which they could not find, for a river ran close by, which the tide ebbed so hard, they could not get into it; so, finding nothing would do, they then came to the resolution of cutting off their legs with the saw, and their hands with the hatchets, and so to fall on their knees and die there. When they were quite ready to kill themselves they made a pause; and, says the master, what shall we do for food, we have not a morsel left? and for fire, what shall we do? Then one of the men said, the ship, or some other ship that should come to it, would not fail to find the body of the ship, and see the fire, and they all agreed that that must be the first thing to put them in mind of their condition; and so they came to the resolution to set fire to the sails, and the wood of the ship too, and they were all set on fire, for they were all out of the ship, except one man whom they had left to help the ship, and he had been set on shore, for the weather grew too violent; however, the fire being at a good distance from the ship, it went out before any part of it could take fire; and then they gave over, as if it had not been so, for they had been ready to sink at it: when they found it would go out, they could not come to a resolution to walk into the sea to their death, and so they resolved to burn their boats which were on shore, which they did. They had saved some of the boat's timber, and they split up the stern-board, the only thing that was above water, and made a fire of it; and so fell to their miserable state of life, which, as I said, was to lie in the middle of the sea in their cabin till they should be washed away. As they did not know how long they had been in this distressed condition, the man went down to the ship to see if there were any boats or anything saved, and told the men at the land the state they were in. They said they hoped to see the ship again some time, but could not come at her; so the man stayed on board the ship all night, and did what he could to get up their hearts, for he believed they would all be in the same condition; and told them that, for his own part, he had been many times that day and night almost ready to let it take him; but that he would stand it out as long as God would give him life to last; and, if he should be so happy to recover the ship, then the captain would give them all the gold that he had left in the ship for them. About eight in the morning the weather cleared up, and the sun appeared, and the man saw, by the help of the glass, which he had with him, the ship at a great distance; then, as it was fair weather, he got all the boats ready, and went into the sea, which was about twelve miles off, and was there about two days; and then, going about a league further, he found the ship all stove, with the ship's side broken in. When he came to the ship he found he had been mistaken in the weather, for he saw the ship so low in the water, that he took her for a wreck; so he took in the boats, and the men would have been all cast away, and there must have been a hundred and twenty men perished, if he had not let them stay in the ship that were in the boat, and about fifty in the other boats; however, he lost several men by the ship's sinking. They went down to the boat, where they found the captain's cabin, or the store-room, as they call it, full of fine linen, and other goods, which he had saved out of the ship. The ship was a China ship, and a very rich one, and when the ship sunk, one of the passengers that had saved himself, a young merchant, jumped into the water, and swam ashore to the nearest point, where he got two canoes, and fetched a pilot, who guided them all safe to an island, and where they lived in the isle seven or eight weeks. After this, when they were come to Holland, they were made freemen of the city of Bremen; and the master, finding the men would tell him all, and discover all the effects which the ship was laden with, he was taken with a very severe fever, and thought he should die before the ship was ready; but he recovered of that fever, but he was never well afterwards, nor had he the use of one of his hands and arms, and that he believed was done to his being so long in the water. The master was much moved with the misery his men had been in for want of water; and, the first opportunity he had, he bought an estate at Svabby, about four miles out of Helsingor; and went home and had the ships' stores unloaded, and began to dig a cellar. When the master came home, the people of the town, to which he had gone, and that of Svabby, used the man that owned the estate very civilly, and sent for him to their country-dances, to which they all went; and, going to one of the country-dances, there was no hall, as we call it, and the company being very merry, they all went out and set up a long table, and ate and drank upon it, without doors, the house being very large; and the steward's wife drank as much as the rest of the company, and he was the worst served; and the steward, though he drank as hard as he could, took the least; but he said the reason was, that he had to do with strange folk, and that he did not know what might happen, and so he kept himself very sober, which the steward's wife did not so much. The next morning, when they went to take up the table and all the glasses, there was none of them found that the table was standing upon; they went out to dig them up, and found them so fast fixed in the ground, that they could not be got up; and they went to dig them out with spades, but could not get them out without; and, as they dug them, they saw that they all pointed up to the sky, and that there were several of them of different kind of glass, but they could not tell what kind, and found one of them to be a piece of great chandelier. The steward said he had no part of the goods the master had lost; but it was not long before they met with another ship, but no man alive on board, and all the goods, and money the master had saved, lost; he, with his wife and child, and three women servants, were in the cabin, and that was the sea the ship was found