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The Virginia Gazette Foreign News August 18, 1738
Richmond, Richmond, Virginia
What is this article about?
The Charming Salley, Capt. Maddox, bound from Jamaica to Bristol, struck a sleeping whale and sank; the crew escaped in a boat, were rescued by the Messenger sloop, and carried into Cork.
Quality green show the numbers
Measured from the scan
— how cleanly the OCR engine read the characters
- Mean ink quality
- 98.0% The length-weighted average confidence across the OCR lines — the mean of exactly the per-line scores whose tails the two figures below report. Typical is 99%.
- Illegible ink
- 0.0% Text sitting in OCR-detected lines that scored below 80% confidence — very shaky reads. Weighted by line length, so one long bad line counts for more than a short one.
- Uncertain ink
- 0.0% Text in lines that scored 80–90% — somewhat shaky reads.
- Matches source
- 94.33% How closely the served text matches the raw OCR of the same boxes, letter by letter, after collapsing spacing and case. This measures agreement, not correctness: the OCR is often wrong and the extractor corrects it, so 100% does not mean perfect, and a low figure usually means poor scan text was rewritten rather than that text was lost (length vs source shows loss).
- Length vs source
- 99.09% Below 100% means text was dropped from the OCR; above means text was added to make it read.
Assembled by the extraction model
— whether the stitched-together text holds up; catches layout and segmentation errors, which the scores above cannot see
- Transcription confidence
- 97.0% (typical 96%) How cleanly the extractor could assemble what it was given. Low here with clean ink scores points at layout analysis — the characters were read correctly but grouped or ordered wrongly.
- Comprehension
- 95.0% Whether the piece reads coherently start to finish. Can stay high while transcription confidence drops, when only part of the component is affected.
Clipping
Full Text
Bristol, April 18. Our Merchants have Advice of an uncommon but sad Accident that happened to the Charming Salley, Capt. Maddox, bound from Jamaica to Bristol; that in her Passage on the 18th of March last, she unfortunately struck on a Whale at Sea, supposed to be asleep on the Water; by which the Ship received such a violent Shock, that she soon sunk, the People having but just Time to save some Papers, a little Provision, and to take to their Boat; and had the good Fortune to be taken up, by the Messenger Sloop, and carry’d into Cork, otherwise they must have inevitably perished for want of Food and Water, or been swallowed up in the Deep.
What sub-type of article is it?
Disaster
Trade Or Commerce
What keywords are associated?
Ship Struck Whale
Charming Salley Sinking
Crew Rescued At Sea
Bristol Merchant Ship
What entities or persons were involved?
Capt. Maddox
Where did it happen?
At Sea, En Route From Jamaica To Bristol
Foreign News Details
Primary Location
At Sea, En Route From Jamaica To Bristol
Event Date
18th Of March Last
Key Persons
Capt. Maddox
Outcome
ship sunk; crew rescued by the messenger sloop and carried into cork