The Castaway

The Castaway is an elegiac poem/ballad written by William Cowper in 1799. The poem is written in rhymed stanzas and gives the account of a crewman who was washed overboard during a storm. The poem is based on George Anson's Voyage around the World after Cowper read an account which told of one of the men being washed overboard and the horror that his shipmates felt as they watched him without being able to help as shown in this stanza of the poemf