Drowning, 1791

'Every past incident of my life seemed to glance across my recollection…'

Last week we met Swiss geologist Albert Heim, who was the first person to systematically document stories of what we now call near-death experiences (NDEs) from his fellow mountaineers, including a life-threatening adventure of his own. I don’t intend to dwell too long on these intimations of mortality, but the rabbit holes of history did send me further back in time. Not surprisingly, other people in the past have written of strange occurrences at the brink of death or of what appeared at the time to be miraculous resurrections (such tales go right back to the Anglo-Saxon times of the Venerable Bede, in fact).¹ And a few years ago, a book from c.1740 was unearthed with what is claimed to be the first medical report of an NDE.

The two particular types of NDE which often crop up, with features in common such as the classic trope of one’s life flashing before one’s eyes, are falling, as discussed here last time, and drowning. In his 1821 Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, for example, Thomas de Quincey recounts a story of this kind:

I was once told by a near relative of mine that, having in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very verge of death but for the assistance which reached her at the last critical moment, she saw in a moment her whole life, clothed in its forgotten incidents, arrayed before her as in a mirror, not successively, but simultaneously…

He goes on to elaborate² that she was nine at the time but lived into her nineties, and her account of the event remained consistent (he also notes that his own opium addiction had led to related experiences).

However, for our main narrative this week, we turn the clock back 30 years before that, although (as with Heim’s account) the actual description was written much later, so we are dependent on the author’s memory. And this time instead of a rock scientist we have a water scientist.

Our author is Francis Beaufort (1774–1857), who is still remembered today as the creator (in 1805) of the Beaufort scale for recording wind speed (he also created a renowned cipher and was a friend of Charles Babbage). Beaufort had French Huguenot roots and was born in Ireland, but most of his career was spent at sea with the British East India Company; in later life he became the official hydrographer of the Royal Navy, an expert in the physical features of the oceans and navigating them.

How Beaufort’s account of his own watery NDE came down to us is a little fiddly. Some time in the 1820s, the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston (who discovered palladium and rhodium, both of which have been essential to modern cars and other technology) got chatting with his friend the artist Lady Lavinia Spencer (she was Princess Diana’s great-great-grandmother). Wollaston told her about the story he’d heard from Francis Beaufort about the latter’s near-drowning as a young shipman. At Wollaston’s persuasion, Beaufort had written the story down for him. A few years later, clearly it was praying on Lady Lavinia’s mind, and she knew other thinkers of the time wanted the details – but Wollaston had died in 1828, so she wrote to his friend Sir John Barrow, a geographer and Admiralty man who also knew Beaufort. After Wollaston died, the latter was returned to Beaufort, and he was thus able to send it to Barrow. (The correspondence about all this is recorded in Barrow’s Autobiographical Memoir of 1847, my source for the story.)³

Beaufort notes his letter was written c.1825, so more than 30 years after the event it describes, which is believed to have taken place around 1791, but it seems to have remained very clear in his mind, just as with de Quincey’s relative, and it is described with a scientist’s care.

Many years ago, when I was a youngster on board one of his majesty’s ships in Portsmouth harbour, after sculling around in a very small boat, I was endeavouring to fasten her alongside the ship to one of the scuttle-rings; in foolish eagerness I stepped upon the gunwale, the boat of course upset, and I fell into the water, and not knowing how to swim, all my efforts to lay hold either of the boat or the floating sculls was fruitless. The transaction had not been observed by the sentinel on the gangway, and therefore it was not till the tide had drifted me some distance astern of the ship that a man in the foretop saw me splashing in the water, and gave the alarm. The first lieutenant instantly and gallantly jumped overboard, the carpenter followed his example, and the gunner hastened into a boat and pulled after them.

With the violent and vain attempts to make myself heard I had swallowed much water; I was soon exhausted by my struggles, and before any relief reached me I had sunk below the surface – all hope had fled – all exertion ceased – and I felt that I was drowning.

So far, these facts were either partially remembered after my recovery, or supplied by those who had latterly witnessed the scene; for during an interval of such agitation a drowning person is too much occupied in catching at every passing straw, or too much absorbed by alternate hope and despair, to mark the succession of events very accurately. Not so, however, with the facts that immediately ensued. My mind had undergone the sudden revolution which appeared to you so remarkable – and all the circumstances of which are as vividly fresh in my memory as if they had occurred but yesterday.

From the moment that every exertion had ceased – which I imagine was the immediate consequence of complete suffocation – a calm feeling of the most perfect tranquillity superseded the most tumultuous sensations – it might be called apathy, certainly not resignation, for drowning no longer appeared an evil – I no longer thought of being rescued, nor was I in any bodily pain. On the contrary, my sensations were now of a rather pleasurable cast, partaking of that dull but contented sort of feeling which precedes the sleep produced by fatigue. Though the senses were thus deadened, not so the mind; its activity seemed to be invigorated in a ratio which defies all description – for thought rose after thought with a rapidity of succession that is not only indescribable, but probably inconceivable, by any one who has not been in a similar situation. The course of those thoughts I can even now in a great measure retrace – the event which had just taken place, the awkwardness that had produced it – the bustle it must have occasioned (for I had observed two persons jump from the chains) – the effect it would have on a most affectionate father – the manner in which he would disclose it to the rest of the family – and a thousand other circumstances minutely associated with home, were the first series of recollections that occurred. They took then a wider range – our last cruise – a former voyage, and shipwreck – my school – the progress I had made there, and the time I misspent – and even all my boyish pursuits and adventures. Thus travelling backwards, every past incident of my life seemed to glance across my recollection in retrograde succession; not, however, in mere outline, as here stated, but the picture filled up with every minute and collateral feature; in short, the whole period of my existence seemed to be placed before me in a kind of panoramic review, and each act of it seemed to be accompanied by some reflection on its cause, or its consequences; indeed, many trifling events which had been long forgotten then crowded into my imagination, and with the character of recent familiarity.

May not all this be indication of the almost infinite powers of memory with which we may awaken in another world, and thus be compelled to contemplate our past lives? Or might it not in some degree warrant the inference that death is only a change or modification of our existence, in which there is no real pause or interruption? But, however that may be, one circumstance was highly remarkable; that the innumerable ideas which flashed into my mind were all retrospective – yet I had been religiously brought up – my hopes and fears of the next world had lost nothing of their early strength, and at any other period intense interest and awful anxiety would have been excited by the mere probability that I was floating on the threshold of eternity: yet at that inexplicable moment when I had a full conviction that I had already crossed the threshold, not a single thought wandered into the future – I was wrapt entirely in the past.

The length of time that was occupied by this deluge of ideas, or rather the shortness of time into which they were condensed, I cannot now state with precision, yet certainly not two minutes could not have elapsed from the moment of suffocation to that of my being hauled up.

The strength of the flood tide made it expedient to pull the boat at once to another ship, where I underwent the usual vulgar process of emptying the water by letting my head hang downwards, then bleeding, chafing, and even administering gin; but my submission had really been so brief, that according to the account of the lookers on, I was very quickly restored to animation.

My feelings when life was returning were the reverse in every point of those which have been described above. One single but confused idea – a miserable belief that I was drowning – dwelt upon my mind, instead of the many clear and definite ideas which had recently rushed through it – a helpless anxiety – a kind of continuous nightmare seemed to press heavily on every sense, and to prevent the formation of any one distinct thought – and it was with difficulty that I became convinced that I was really alive. Again, instead of being absolutely free from all bodily pain, as in my drowning state, I was now tortured with pain all over me; and though I have since been wounded in several places, and have also submitted to severe surgical discipline, yet my sufferings were at that time far greater; at least in general distress.

1. The 2009 Handbook of Near-Death Experiences offers a good survey past and present if you want to learn more.

2. You can read the full story here.

3. Barrow’s book is here.