Word: brunswick
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...Later that day, spirits aboard the Brunswick and the nine vessels grouped around her rose still higher. The men had spotted a flotilla of five small boats, dispatched from the steamer, coming toward them. It seemed that the promised passage out of the Bering Strait was about to be delivered. But, as the boats came into clearer view, the sailors gathered on the decks of the awaiting whaleships noticed that the approaching craft carried uniformed Confederate Navy officers. Moreover, almost simultaneously, the whaling seamen heard a warning shot fired in their direction from the steamer, and noticed that the Stars...
...collision stove a hole below the Brunswick's waterline, breaching the wooden planking and the copper-alloy-sheathing of her hull. Afterward, the ship's officers and crew had done their best to still the rush of sea-water into the ship's holds. But the ship's master, Alden T. Potter, knew that, with over a thousand miles of water between them and the nearest shipyard, he and his crew had little hope of repairing the vessel. In the meantime, all he could do was what American captains had always done in such situations: raise Old Glory upside down...
...other whaling vessels answering the Brunswick's distress flag arrived, each vessel's master-as captains of commercial ships are usually called-came aboard to survey the damage. And each, in turn, concurred that the listing ship was a lost cause. They also agreed with Captain Potter that his only recourse was to fall back on the general custom under the circumstances: condemn the ship and auction off her cargo, whaleboats and whatever gear that could be hauled off the vessel. At the least, the Brunswick's master could reduce some of the losses to his ship's owner...
...Decision made, they set to business and by the early morning of June 28, the auction had concluded. But as accounts were being squared and sailors from the nine other whaling vessels were busy removing barrels and crates from the crippled Brunswick, yet another ship hove into view, from the south. Observing the ship's three masts and the plume of smoke rising from her, the whaling masters immediately concluded that she was an auxiliary steamer-so-called because she was powered by both wind and a steam-engine powered iron-screw propeller. Such vessels were rare, if not unknown...
...This latter fact dispelled much of the whalemen's anxiety. And who knew? Perhaps the approaching steamer could provide the Brunswick's master and crew with passage out of this icy realm. Captain Jeremiah Ludlow of the Isaac Howland, one of the whaling vessels gathered around the Brunswick, agreed to carry Potter's request to the steamer. Dispatched in a whaleboat, he soon stood on the steamer's deck. Ludlow failed to learn the mystery ship's identity, and his reception by her officers had been a bit frosty. But they seemed to have expressed, albeit in vague language...