Did somebody rouse Davy Jones’ anger?| ExxonMobil Marine

3/9/2020
Davy Jones

Did somebody rouse Davy Jones’ anger?

One fine day in October 1829, the schooner Mermaid hit a reef and was lost, leaving the full crew to live on a nearby rock for three days on nothing but rainwater, barnacles, ship’s biscuits and a few shellfish.

On the third day they were saved by the Swiftshore which unfortunately failed to live up to its name. She was neither swift, nor sure and two days later run aground on a reef. She too was lost.

The two crews were then saved by the schooner Governor Ready, but disaster struck again when the ship caught fire and within a matter of hours, she was beyond saving.

All men floated in the boats for their next saviour in the form of the cutter, Comet. But, alas it was not to be, as she ran into a fierce storm and went down.

The survivors (now totalling 85) were seemingly rescued again by the Jupiter, but sadly, just like the Mermaid, she caught a reef before she could reach land.

As the now 123 survivors from five different crews (as all men survived each and every disaster) clung desperately to some slippery rocks, Father Neptune must have taken pity on them and called off Davy Jones’s wrath. The passenger ship, City of Leeds, picked them up and eventually made port.

Even stranger than the odds of surviving five shipwrecks in the 1800’s, aboard the City of Leeds was an elderly woman, desperately ill, raving about a son she hadn’t seen for 10 years. Nobody thought she would survive, but as it turned out her son was one of the Mermaid survivors. Once re-acquainted with her long-lost son, she lived for another 18 years.

Was it fate? Destiny?

Click here for the full story.

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