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The Diary of Christian Koch
1831-1836
On May 23,	1831, I left the ship, "Betsy", and went aboard the American brig,
Thetis, commanded by Capt. Lorenzen, and hailing from Middleton, Conn. I agreed to work for my passage. We stayed in St. Croix some days, and sailed from there May 31st. As soon as we were out I felt the difference between Danish and American vessels. I was very much impressed with the absence of cursing and scolding which is so common on Danish vessels. Still, here everything was carried on as well if not better.
All went well the first six days out, but on the evening of the 6th of June heavy clouds rose in the Northeast, and it commenced blowing fresh, so we reefed our sails. The breeze grew stronger and stronger and took one reef after another, till, in the morning, we did not have out a rag.
The storm raged, and there was a sea whose like I have never seen, the vessel was deeply laden with rum and molasses--we had seventy casks on deck. Toward noon the storm was at its worst. The ship was more under than above the water and it was a miracle no one was washed overboard. The seas kept growing, and the ship strained so we feared it would go to pieces, so the captain gave orders to cut the masts.
The second mate ran with an ax and cut the mast so it broke off close to the deck. I was cutting one of the ropes, when the rest snapped like sewing thread. The mast jumped out of the track in its fall, smashed eight casks of rum, knocked a great hole in the deck, and then fell over the bulwarks.
In the	meantime the water poured through the hole,	so	we thought the ship
would sink.	We packed our bed-clothes and whatever else	we	could find into	the
hole and succeeded in stopping the flow from coming in so fast.
All this time the mast was hanging on the side bumping against the ship and threatening to break all to pieces. It was almost impossible to work in the terrible sea and it took us an hour to get it cleared away. The bowsprit was pulled off with the mast.
Now we	had to think of the pumps, but we found the	water too high in	the
bulks, so we resolved to throw our deck load overboard	to	ease the ship.	We
knocked the bottoms out of the rum casks. As soon as the rum began to flow, the sailors lay down and lapped it up and in a very short time we had only one or two sober men. The captain, who already had been half-drunk for sometime, stood helpless on the wheel deck and cried.
Two Irish passengers were aboard. One of them was so frightened he tried to jump overboard, so we simply shut both of them up in the cabin and got no help from them.
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