Tuesday 30 August 1836

Tuesday August 30 Wind fair but the weather unsettled,
the atmosphere heavily charged with electricity. A poor
sailor died this afternoon of consumption. He was perfectly
sensible to his latest hour, and spoke of his death with the
calmness and the hope of a Christian. He was ordered to
be buried in the evening, and accordingly by torch light
his body was committed to the deep. M^r Howard read the
prayers of the Church, the crew was silent and attentive, and
the poor fellow’s mess-mate who had nursed him throughout the
whole period of his illness, shewed by his sobbing and tears
that a sailor can feel like a man. Scarcely was the service
over, when before the body could have reached the depth of
its watery grave it began to lighten in vivid and heart
stirring splendour; the wind freshened, and from a dead
oppressive calm it blew a hurricane; the rain poured down
in torrents only witnessed within the tropics, and the elements
seemed to celebrate the seaman’s funeral by continuing
to break over us for the remainder of the evening in
awful sublimity.