A fresh breeze came from S in the morning and the sky was rainy.
Around 8 o’clock (after the prayer) there was an incident between me and the boatswain. I argued with him on the deck and also on the quarterdeck, where he went at me with cursing and swearing in a very rude fashion. This had happened many times before. I had told him To enlarge the surface area exposed to the wind.to reef in the back and the front of the topsail, but he had sent only one man to the front and one to the back to do so. Thereupon I asked him why he only send one man to the front, to which he rudely responded that he only had 2 men available. This was not true because we had another 4 that could come up to help. I had told him to reef both in the front and in the back, after which he only sent one to each. But this was clearly a 2-men job and I really did not want the topsails to be torn apart, so I told him either to help or not to do both front and back at the same time.
Now the captain also knew the boatswains’ rudeness and came out of his cabin. He told the boatswain to shut up against the first mate, to which the boatswain responded that he didn’t want to do that. The captain said again: “Shut up!” The boatswain responded: “I cannot and do not want to shut up.” Upon that the captain picked up the garbage shovel and hit him twice. The boatman then said that he refused to work any longer, to which the captain said that that was perfect because otherwise he would have been forced to take him off duty for his perpetuating rudeness. The boatswain had already been warned twice in the cabin that he should not be rude and not use rudeness against the steersmen or anyone else.
Later, at 11 o’clock after the slaves’ meal, the mate and the boatswain were asked to come into the cabin. In our presence the captain asked the boatswain if he resigned his job as a boatswain or his work on the ship as a whole. To this he responded that he had not resigned anything, and thereby he took back his words. Because everyone who had heard him say that, also heard that the did not want to continue until the West-Indies. Thus he was told to take up his shift again, but that if he would show any rudeness to any steersmen again, he would be taken off the shift.
Later in the afternoon our estimated compound course and covered distance were nothing and we were on the same latitude and longitude as before. We found longitude to be 2º51’. We cleaned on the ‘tween decks and aft and we fumigated the decks with incense and juniper. Later during the afternoon, evening and night we had the wind from S to SSE and again SSW. We tacked about. Later stiff rain, and it stayed that way until the morning.
