ATHENIENNE.


The Athenienne, of 64 guns, commanded by Captain Robert Raynsford,
with a crew of 470 men, sailed from Gibraltar on the 16th of October,
1806, and at noon on the 20th, the Island of Sardinia was seen in the
distance. The ship continued under a press of sail with a fair wind,
and sped on her course towards Malta. At eight o'clock of the evening
of the 20th, the first watch had been stationed, and the officer on
duty had reported the ship's progress at nine knots an hour. The
labours of the day were over, and all, save the few whom duty or
inclination kept on deck, had gone below. Another hour passed away;
the majority of the crew had retired to their berths to seek repose
after the toils of the day, and to gain fresh strength for the
morrow--that morrow which many of them were destined never to behold.

One there was on board the Athenienne, to whose care the safety of the
vessel and the lives of her crew had been entrusted, who appeared to
have misgivings as to the course she was steering. The captain was
seated in his cabin, looking over the chart with one of his officers,
when he exclaimed, 'If the Esquerques do exist, we are now on them,'
Scarcely were the words out of his mouth when the ship struck.

For the information of our readers, we must state that the Esquerques,
or Shirki, are a reef of sunken rocks lying about eighty miles west
from Sicily, and about forty-eight from Cape Bon, on the coast of
Africa. In 1806, the charts were not as accurate as they are in the
present day, and the reef was not laid down in all of them; the very