6th August 1860:
Monday 6th. The Same til 12 at noon, when it commenced to rain, the wind coming ahead. we took in all the Studding Sails and braced the yards up. continued raining incessantly, all night. we filled up the tanks, casks and everything that would hold water. 4 PM the Captain caught a shark but it was not a full grown one, it measured about 5 or 6 feet in length. we dragged him along the Poop and threw him on the Main deck, he all the time kept turning over on his back, trying to get hold of someone’s leg, but the men soon made short work of him. they cut off his head and tail, took out the backbone and tool the best part of him for a fresh mess. I got the jaws and backbone as curios and in towing them overboard to clean the jaws, which had 4 rows of teeth, chafed the line in two and I lost them. Sun obscure.
Half of this already appeared a day or two ago by mistake, so sorry if you’ve read it before! The gruesome chopping up of the shark properly belongs here, and if you want to read the entry for the 4th again, I have now changed it to the correct entry from the diary! You’ll hear about rats instead of sharks.
