Mr. Kazallon thought that booking passage on a cargo ship from Charleston to Liverpool would be a charming way to return to his English homeland. If he only knew! A crazed sea captain, a disaster in the hold, storms, oppressive heat, sharks, and starvation are just some of the many travails that beset both passengers and crew. Will any of them survive the wreck of the Chancellor?
Excerpt:
Charleston, September 27, 1869. We have just left the Battery wharf, at 3 P. M. The ebb tide is fast carrying us out to sea. Captain Huntly has put on all sail, and the north-wind is wafting the Chancellor across the bay. We soon double Fort Sumter, and the batteries flanking us along the coast are passed on the left. At four o’clock the entrance to the harbor, through which rushes a rapid ebb current, gives egress to the ves sel. But the Open ocean is still distant, and in order to reach it we must follow in the narrow channels which the waves have hollowed out in the sand-banks. Captain H untly therefore enters the southwest channel. The sails are nearly trimmed, and by seven in the evening our vessel has left behind the last sandy point on the coast, and is fairly launched upon the Atlantic.
The Chancellor, a fine three-masted ship of nine hundred tons burden, belongs to the wealthy house of the Lairds, of Liverpool. She is two years old.
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