ABSTRACT
Upon the 19th of January, Simon M4Cone and Thomas Thompson landed at Barbadoes-they were the only survivors of the crew of the ship Mary, from' Cutchoe, in Guinea, with slaves, which vessel they left to leeward of the Canary Islands, upon the night of the 8th of November, in a sinking state, with near 300 Negroes and fifteen of the crew on board. There were in the boat, when she left the ship, two Portuguese and four Englishmen, besides M4 Cone and Thompson, and they had
seven stone bottles of water and five botdes of brandy. Upon the 8th of December they saw a sail, who answered their signal of distress by laying-to, until they were near enough to see the men on her deck, " and then, (as M'Cone says,) she made sail, and went away from us without speaking to us; they being afraid, as we imagined, when they saw so many of us in the boat." Hunger now obliged them to kill one of their companions, and they agreed to begin with one of the Portuguese: they cut his flesh in small pieces, dipt them in salt water, and dried then} in the sun, until the flesh was hardened; four more of the crew were served in the same way. W e also killed the sixth man, but were forced so to do, because he would have killed me, Simon M'Cone (one of these declarants); for he struck me with the tiller of the boat, and had just bereaved me of life, when this my comrade, Thomas Thompson, came to my relief, and we were forced to kill him, though we flung him overboard ; for he was so rotten that we could eat no part of him." These two, the only survivors, now determined to " live and die the one by the other, and not one to destroy the other, but to leave all things to the almighty providence of God, expecting nothing less than famine; for we lived several days without eating any thing, saving one small flying fish that fell into the boat, and some small barnacles that grew on the boat," which they eat raw. At last, upon the 19th of January, they made the island of Barbadoes, where they were very near being cast on shore, being so extremely weak, that they could not work the boat. A schooner, commanded by Glanveil Nicholas, took them up and landed them at Bridge Town, where Thompson died a few days afterwards.
