LETTER: TO W.D.B. AND A.B.
LIVERPOOL, October 26, 1846
My dear sons: Thank God with me that we are once more on
TERRA FIRMA. We arrived yesterday morning at ten o\'clock, after a
very rough voyage and after riding all night in the Channel in a
tremendous gale, so bad that no pilot could reach us to bring us in on
Saturday evening. A record of a sea voyage will be only interesting to
you who love me, but I must give it to you that you may know what to
expect if you ever undertake it; but first, I must sum it all up by saying that
of all horrors, of all physical miseries, tortures, and distresses, a sea
voyage is the greatest . . . The Liverpool paper this morning, after
announcing our arrival says: "The GREAT WESTERn, notwithstanding
she encountered throughout a series of most severe gales, accomplished
the passage in sixteen days and twelve hours."
To begin at the moment I left New York: I was so absorbed by the
pain of parting from you that I was in a state of complete apathy with
regard to all about me. I did not sentimentalize about "the receding
shores of my country;" I hardly looked at them, indeed. Friday I was
awoke in the middle of the night by the roaring of the wind and sea and
SUCH motion of the vessel.
The gale lasted all Saturday and Sunday, strong from the North, and as
we were in the region where the waters of the Bay of Fundy run out and
meet those of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, afterwards we had a strong cross
sea. May you never experience a "cross sea." . . . Oh how I wished it had
pleased God to plant some little islands as resting-places in the great waste
of waters, some resting station. But no, we must keep on, on, with
everything in motion that your eye could rest on. Everything tumbling
about . . . We lived through it, however, and the sun of Sunday morn rose
clear and bright. A pilot got on board about seven and at ten we were in
Liverpool.