Note 104 — CANTO THE SECOND.[96]
Reading edition
{91}["A midshipman was appointed to guard the spirit-room, to repress that unhappy desire of a devoted crew to die in a state of intoxication. The sailors, though in other respects orderly in conduct, here pressed eagerly upon him.
"'Give us some grog,' they exclaimed, 'it will be all one an hour hence.'—'I know we must die,' replied the gallant officer, coolly, 'but let us die like men!'—Armed with a brace of pistols, he kept his post, even while the ship was sinking."—"Loss of the Earl of Abergavenny, February 5, 1805," Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, iii. 418. John Wordsworth, the poet's brother, was captain of the Abergavenny. See Life of William Wordsworth, by Professor Knight, 1889, i. 370-380; see, too, Coleridge's Anima Poetæ, 1895, p. 132. For a contemporary report, see a Maltese paper, Il Cartaginense, April 17, 1805.]