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Final Years
Not much is known of Lady Washington's last few years. She sailed under various captains whose identities are a matter of much rumour.
She is known to have spent some time in Nootka Sound, and perhaps made a few visits to China but most likely did not return to Boston.
It is possible that the ship's purser/supercargo became captain at Canton or at some other time. Apparently the Lady was in a river near the Philippines when disaster struck -- or rather slowly approached. It began harmlessly enough when the chafing gear was neglected. As a result, one of the anchor ropes was left unprotected in the storm and though the anchor itself did not move the Lady's bow was being flung up and down and eventually the line snapped.
Caught in bad weather near a possible river bar, a boat was sent out to take a sounding. At the current tide it would have been impossible to continue so they decided to wait it out and send the ship's boat on shore for another anchor. If they had two of them they could have kedged the vessel along. Kedging was when one or two boats were sent out with anchors. The Lady would have been pulled up to one of them as the other was sent out ahead using the extra slack. In that way the Lady could have slowly pulled herself out of the situation she was in. Unfortunately all she had was one of her main anchors and even that was beginning to drag.
Meanwhile on shore, the crew sent to find a new anchor had forgotten to leave someone at the boat so they returned to find it had been stolen. The Lady sent out the smaller one which was most unequal to the terrible conditions at the time. The brig dragged herself anchor and all onto a sand bar. Had the weather been more favourable she might have survived but the fates had turned against her.
No trace remains except for her memory and perhaps a stray cannonball.
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 Photo by Creative Enterprise Studio
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