William Jacob

Bob Sexton

The logbook of the Rapid, and indeed Light’s papers, have not survived and we learn little from his published Brief Journal. William Pullen, the second officer who was another to lose all his notes by fire, starts off a memoir by saying that ‘The details of a long sea voyage have been so often detailed that I shall nothing about ours, suffice it was a very pleasant one’. However, he continues by giving us a run-down on his mess-mates. One such was young William Jacob, a name that will be well-known to wine-drinkers, who was an Assistant Surveyor. He was ‘barely from home before, simplicity beaming from his countenance, a good natured and unassuming fellow, a good subject for playing practical jokes on...’. One day Claughton, another assistant surveyor who was officer of the fore-noon watch, cried out, ‘a sea serpent!’ Everybody rushed up on deck and there it was, floating in a bucket of sea-water that had been hauled up. It was greatly praised, and said to be the finest specimen anybody had ever seen. There was great enthusiasm to secure it, but Jacob managed to outbid them all, and had it preserved in spirit until long after the voyage. Eventually, dinner conversation at Rapid Bay with officers from the Cygnet turned to curiosities seen, and only then did a highly mortified William Jacob learn that he had carefully preserved the tail of the last pig killed on board for food.