nearly midnight
With the help of his wife he launched a light boat , but long before he got into the sweep of the heavier breakers , he saw that she could never live on the bar , and it was with great difficulty that he regained the shore . At nightfall , although the hull was badly shattered , no one had perished , and the tide had so far abated that the party could easily have waded ashore ; and Captain Coffin and another man , after vainly attempting to induce the other three to accompany them , started themselves . `` The others charged them with cowardice in leaving the vessel , said that the wind would go down , and they could get the craft off at flood-tide , and so prevailed over the better judgment of the captain and his companion that they returned to the fated vessel , and prepared , as well as possible , for the returning tide . `` As the tide rose , the sea came with little , if any , diminution of fury ; and until nearly midnight Bridges watched the signal lantern , which called in vain for the aid which it was not in the power of man to bestow . Intense cold was added to the other horrors of their situation , and the heavy seas came each hour in lessened fury , as the water thickened into ` sludge . ' At eleven o'clock the tide was at its height ; the seas had ceased to sweep across the hogged and sunken hull , and a sheet of thin ice reached from the shore to the vessel 's side . Captain Coffin tried the ice , and , finding that it would bear his weight , decided to try to reach the Blockhouse Light , which shone brightly three miles away .