July 12th, 1818
W. Lon. 22, N. Lat. 54

This day as the anniver­sary of the Bat­tle of the Boyne* was com­mem­o­rat­ed by a cer­tain part of our pas­sen­gers to the no small annoy­ance of anoth­er part. Par­ty spir­it began to kin­dle on board and it required all the influ­ence of our good-natured Capt. to keep it under amongst them. We knew that if any dis­putes took place either one or both par­ties would attempt to retal­i­ate on him by lodg­ing infor­ma­tion of his land­ing pas­sen­gers in the State of New York with­out enter­ing their names in the Cus­tom House, con­trary to the laws of that state. This would sub­ject the ship to a fine of 500 dol­lars. The fear of this kept our poor Capt. in a con­tin­u­al state of alarm and anx­i­ety. I have often heard him declare that he would nev­er again place him­self in the pow­er of any crew or set of pas­sen­gers in the same man­ner. For that a state of servile depen­den­cy on their fick­le humors was not to be borne by any repub­li­can of spirit.

Bat­tle of the Boyne

A few days back in North­ern Lat. we seen at a small dis­tance, a large whale spout­ing up immense quan­ti­ties of water to a con­sid­er­able dis­tance above the sur­face. We now began to per­ceive large shoals of Gram­pus­es** swim­ming past in their slow, irreg­u­lar, heav­ing course on the sur­face of the great deep. For the descrip­tion of these I refer you to the dif­fer­ent nat­ur­al his­to­ries and we seen sea fowl every day between land and the Capt., who was a good marks­man, kept shoot­ing at them con­stant­ly though we could nev­er get them on board.

*****

* The Bat­tle of the Boyne was the famous bat­tle on July 12, 1690 in which the Protes­tants (the Williamites) defeat­ed the Catholics (the Jaco­bites) at the Riv­er Boyne.

** Orcas.

Next Week: The inside scoop on Cap­tain Moses Gale.