Letter to Mother (1792) Home Peter Heywood Bligh Letters to Heywood Family

Peter Heywood Letter to his Sister from the Hector (1792)
with Sketches

Hector, July 16, 1792

My Dearest Nessy,

Let me hope this will find you at Douglas, having laid aside all thoughts of your most affectionate intention to see your unfortunate brother. Alas! my love, an interview with those most dear to me on earth is for the present denied me! Picture then to yourself how great would be the disappointment—to you more especially, as it would be altogether unexpected—to me 'twould be nothing more than I have long been inured to. Yet the anxiety I should feel from having one so dear to me, near at hand and unable to see her, would be almost insupportable. Let us then be resigned to our fate, contented with this sort of communication, and be thankful to God for having allowed us that happiness—for be assured my confinement is liberty compared to what it has been for the last fifteen months, when I am reading the dear and affectionate sentiments of my mother and sisters in the long-wished-for sight of their handwriting. It grieves me to think how unhappy such a disappointment would have made my dear Nessy, and I shall still be in pain till I hear that my last letter, or one from Mr. Heywood, has prevented it. Long absence, my love, augments the joy we feel at meeting. Aug 29, 1791 I send you two little sketches of the manner in which his Majesty's ship Pandora went down on the 29th August, and of the appearance which we who survived made on the small sandy key within the reef, about ninety yards long and sixty broad, in all ninety-nine souls; here we remained three days, subsisting on a single wine-glass of wine or water, and two ounces of bread a day, with no shelter from the meridian and then vertical sun. Captain Edwards had tents erected for himself and his people, and we prisoners petitioned him for an old sail which was lying useless, part of the wreck, but he refused it; and the only shelter we had was to bury ourselves up to the neck in the burning sand, which scorched the skin entirely off our bodies, for we were quite naked, and we appeared as if dipped in large tubs of boiling water. We were nineteen days in the same miserable situation before we landed at Coupang. I was in the ship, in irons, hands and feet, much longer than till the position you now see her in, the poop alone being above water (and that knee deep), when a kind Providence assisted me to get out of irons and escape from her. With sincere love and duty to my dear mother, brothers and sisters, I remain,

Your affectionate brother,
PETER HEYWOOD

Pandora foundering
Daybreak, Aug. 29th, 1791

Pandora Survivors' Encampment on Sandy Key
Noon, Aug. 29th, 1791

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