Pirates and Shipwrecks: True Stories

The Lucky Escape of Daniel Collins

A tale of desperate men, fierce pirates, and missing heads, adapted from the Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and Murder of Five of Her Crew, By Pirates, on the Coast of Cuba, Dec. 1824. It is by Daniel Collins, one of only two survivors.

Walk slowly into an old Maine graveyard today and you can still see the tombstones of the young men. They are farther back, behind neater rows of graves from more recent times. But you can find them if you look, and you can still make out the words carved into the granite markers almost two hundred years ago.

In those days, young men went to sea and many did not come home. Unexpected storms, leaky ships, bad charts, and maybe just bad luck—it was a hard life to go to sea.

Daniel Collins was an ambitious, up-and-coming sailor, and he knew from the time he was a boy that he wanted to go to sea. He was already third mate of the Betsey, just two men away from being a captain, which was his goal.

In November 1824, the plan was to get some good Maine lumber—pine and birch from the nearby banks of the Sheepscot River—load it onto the Betsey, make the fairly safe trip down to Cuba, unload it, and come back home.

The seven-man crew didn’t know that five of them would soon have their names carved into tombstones in graveyards around the small village of Wiscasset. They didn’t know their bones would soon be scattered on the white, sandy beach of a small island called the Cross of the Father, not too far from Cuba.

We know where the bones are. But we don’t know whether the heads of those young sailors are in the same place.

Things began to go wrong very quickly on the way down to Cuba. The captain, Ellis Hilton, an experienced and kind man who had made the trip to Cuba before, was sick almost the whole way. He spent a lot of time in his bunk in his cabin. That made the mood on board a bit tense. Crews need leadership to give them confidence.

Three weeks after they left Wiscasset, Maine, the Betsey made it to the warm and shallow waters of the Caribbean Sea, a place dotted with islands. Some of the islands were regular stops for boats from Maine. Other islands meant danger, with rocks and hidden underwater reefs lying in wait to trap sailors who didn’t know where they were going or were tired and a little careless. Maybe they had a sick captain who couldn’t give directions.

The captain ordered that the Betsey anchor and the crew take a well-deserved rest near a beautiful, unknown island. That would be the last rest all of them would take.

That night, Daniel Collins had an unsettling dream.

The dream frightened him so much he couldn’t get back to sleep. He bolted upright in his bunk, worried, but not sure why. The dream put him on edge. In a very short time, that uneasiness would save his life.

The next day, they pulled up anchor. They were almost to Cuba and the captain was anxious to deliver the lumber and be paid. That night, the wind picked up, becoming stronger and more unpredictable. Captain Hilton, who had been in his cabin as usual, came out briefly to take a look.

When Daniel Collins saw the captain emerge from his cabin, he asked if he could drop some of the sails to slow the boat down and make things a bit safer. He worried about a storm.

Captain Hilton said no. Time was money, and there was no time to slow down now that they were so close to dropping off the cargo. When the captain went back to his cabin, Daniel Collins took charge as the night became so dark and starless he could barely see his hand in front of his face.

Later that night, when the first mate, Joshua Merry, came up to take over steering, Daniel Collins told him, All is well.

Daniel Collins went to his bunk, but couldn’t sleep. A half hour later, any chance of nodding off ended quickly and violently when the Betsey hit something very hard and unforgiving. There was a tremendous crashing explosion of noise. Daniel Collins was thrown from his bunk and covered with boxes and barrels from storage.

The Betsey had hit an underwater reef and was sinking. Her thick wooden sides had ripped open and water was rushing in.

The Betsey’s wide and solid bow had been torn off like a thin piece of tissue paper. The boat came apart quickly, groaning and screaming, as if it were alive.

The valuable cargo the crew had loaded three weeks before rushed out to sea, lost forever. The crew leaped from the crumbling ship, then pulled themselves into the Betsey’s one lifeboat, which had come loose and floated nearby.

Then they watched, stunned, as the Betsey sank to the bottom.

Daniel Collins was happy to see the captain’s dog had made it into the lifeboat. Not for sentimental reasons, though. If they couldn’t reach the safety of land, the dog would make a nice dinner, he thought.

At least they were all alive—Captain Hilton, Joshua Merry, Daniel Collins, Charles Manuel, Seth Russel, Benjamin Bridge, and the cook, Detrey Jerome. But things had changed. There would be no delivering lumber to Cuba, no Christmas celebrations, and no warm sunshine on the beach while they counted their hard-earned money.

That was not even the worst of it. But, of course, they didn’t know that at the time.

The lifeboat leaked. It leaked so badly that the soaked and frightened survivors who weren’t busy rowing had to move in a frenzy to bail out the water that was rushing in. They only had one bucket and two canvas hats. This was not an efficient way to remove hundreds of gallons of water from the boat!

As the waves