The papers were on Thursday full of. a horrid mutiny
which occurred on board an American ship, the Frank N. Thayer,' of 1,000 tons, Captain Clarke, some seven hundred miles from St. Helena. According to the captain's account, two "coolies," taken on board at Manilla, on January 2nd, without any rhyme or reason, rushed on the chief and second mate and stabbed them with knives, then stabbed the captain, and then killed three other men. Four more were wounded, and the remainder, nine Europeans and a Chinese, were nailed up helpless in the forecastle or fled to the rigging. The captain was not dead, and after some hours of torpor, he contrived to shoot one mutineer, who jumped overboard ; the other fired the ship, and also jumped overboard ; and the survivors reached St. Helena in an open boat. It is a most horrible story, and has excited great sympathy ; and we should like to know how much of it is exactly true. The two " coolies " were palpably "Manilla men," and not coolies,—that is, were half-caste sailors from Manilla, belonging to a well-known class of industrious and brave men, who are such good sailors that they are hardly ever enlisted except as quartermasters, and are most unlikely to mutiny without a motive. These two men, armed only with knives, beat an American captain and si,eteen German or Norse sailors, none of whom showed common courage, and finally committed suicide after firing the ship. That may all have been so; extraordinary inci- dents happen at sea; but we should like to have heard the Manilla men's account of the whale business. The defeat of seventeen Europeans is nearly incredible.
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