The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism Volume I Part 4

"There was a tear in the eye of the hardy sailor who obeyed him, whispering as he did so, 'Keep up, Bill; it'll soon be over now.'

"'Five, six,' the corporal slowly counted; 'seven, eight.' It is the last dozen, and how acute must be the torture! 'Nine, ten.' The blood comes now fast enough, and-yes, gentle reader, I _will_ spare your feelings. The man was cast loose at last, and put on the sick-list; he had borne his punishment without a groan, and without moving a muscle. A large pet monkey sat crunching nuts in the rigging, and grinning all the time; I have no doubt _he_ enjoyed the spectacle immensely, _for he was only an ape_."

Dr. Stables gives his opinion on the use of the cat in honest and outspoken terms. He considers "corporal punishment, as applied to men, _cowardly_, _cruel_, and debasing to _human nature_; and as applied to boys, _brutal_, and sometimes even _fiendish_."

The writer has statistics before him which prove that 456 cases of flogging boys took place in 1875, and that only seven men were punished during that year. There is every probability that the use of the naval cat will ere long be abolished, and important as is good discipline on board s.h.i.+p, there are many leading authorities who believe that it can be maintained without it. The captain of a vessel is its king, reigning in a little world of his own, and separated for weeks or months from the possibility of reprimand. If he is a tyrannical man, he can make his s.h.i.+p a floating h.e.l.l for all on board. A system of fines for small offences has been proposed, and the idea has this advantage, that in case they prove on investigation to have been unjustly imposed, the money can be returned.

The disgrace of a flogging sticks to a boy or man, and, besides, as a punishment is infinitely too severe for most of the offences for which it is inflicted. It would be a cruel punishment were the judge infallible, but with an erring human being for an irresponsible judge, the matter is far worse. And that good seamen are deterred from entering the Royal Navy, knowing that the commission of a peccadillo or two may bring down the cat on their unlucky shoulders, is a matter of fact.

We shall meet the sailor on the sea many a time and again during the progress of this work, and see how hardly he earns his scanty reward in the midst of the awful dangers peculiar to the elements he dares.

Shakespeare says that he is-

"A man whom both the waters and the wind, In that vast tennis-court, hath made the ball For them to play on"-

that the men of all others who have made England what she is, have not altogether a bed of roses even on a well-conducted vessel, whilst they may lose their lives at any moment by s.h.i.+pwreck and sudden death. George Herbert says-

"Praise the sea, but keep on land."

And while the present writer would be sorry to prevent any healthy, capable, adventurous boy from entering a n.o.ble profession, he recommends him to first study the literature of the sea to the best and fullest of his ability. Our succeeding chapter will exhibit some of the special perils which surround the sailor's life, whilst it will exemplify to some extent the qualities specially required and expected from him.

CHAPTER IV.

PERILS OF THE SAILOR'S LIFE.

The Loss of the _Captain_-Six Hundred Souls swept into Eternity without a Warning-The Mansion and the Cottage alike Sufferers-Causes of the Disaster-Horrors of the Scene-n.o.ble Captain Burgoyne-Narratives of Survivors-An almost Incredible Feat-Loss of the _Royal George_-A great Disaster caused by a Trifle-Nine Hundred Lost-A Child saved by a Sheep-The Portholes Upright-An involuntary Bath of Tar-Rafts of Corpses-The Vessel Blown up in 1839-40-The Loss of the _Vanguard_-Half a Million sunk in Fifty Minutes-Admirable Discipline on Board-All Saved-The Court Martial.

England, and indeed all Europe, long prior to 1870 had been busily constructing ironclads, and the daily journals teemed with descriptions of new forms and varieties of s.h.i.+ps, armour, and armament, as well as of new and enormous guns, which, rightly directed, might sink them to the bottom.

Among the more curious of the ironclads of that period, and the construction of which had led to any quant.i.ty of discussion, sometimes of a very angry kind, was the turret-s.h.i.+p-practically the sea-going "monitor"-_Captain_, which Captain Cowper Phipps Coles had at length been permitted to construct. Coles, who was an enthusiast of great scientific attainments, as well as a practical seaman, which too many of our experimentalists in this direction have not been, had distinguished himself in the Crimea, and had later made many improvements in rendering vessels shot-proof. His revolving turrets are, however, the inventions with which his name are more intimately connected, although he had much to do with the general construction of the _Captain_, and other ironclads of the period.

The _Captain_ was a large double-screw armour-plated vessel, of 4,272 tons. Her armour in the most exposed parts was eight inches in thickness, ranging elsewhere downwards from seven to as low as three inches. She had two revolving turrets, the strongest and heaviest yet built, and carried six powerful guns. Among the peculiarities of her construction were, that she had only nine feet of "free-board"-_i.e._, that was the height of her sides out of water. The forecastle and after-part of the vessel were raised above this, and they were connected with a light hurricane-deck.

This, as we shall see, played an important part in the sad disaster we have to relate.

On the morning of the 8th of September, 1870, English readers, at their breakfast-tables, in railway carriages, and everywhere, were startled with the news that the _Captain_ had foundered, with all hands, in the Bay of Biscay. Six hundred men had been swept into eternity without a moment's warning. She had been in company with the squadron the night before, and, indeed, had been visited by the admiral, for purposes of inspection, the previous afternoon. The early part of the evening had been fine; later it had become what sailors call "dirty weather;" at midnight the wind rose fast, and soon culminated in a furious gale. At 2.15 in the morning of the 7th a heavy bank of clouds pa.s.sed off, and the stars came out clear and bright, the moon then setting; but no vessel could be discerned where the _Captain_ had been last observed. At daybreak the squadron was all in sight, but scattered. "_Only ten s.h.i.+ps instead of eleven could be discerned, the __'__Captain__'__ being the missing one._" Later, it appeared that seventeen of the men and the gunner had escaped, and landed at Corbucion, north of Cape Finisterre, on the afternoon of the 7th. _All the men who were saved belonged to the starboard watch_; or, in other words, none escaped except those on deck duty. Every man below, whether soundly sleeping after his day's work, or tossing sleeplessly in his berth, thinking of home and friends and present peril, or watching the engines, or feeding the furnaces, went down, without the faintest possibility of escaping his doom.

Think of this catastrophe, and what it involved! The families and friends of 600 men plunged into mourning, and the scores on scores of wives and children into poverty! In _one_ street of Portsea, thirty wives were made widows by the occurrence.(43) The shock of the news killed one poor woman, then in weak health. Nor were the sad effects confined to the cottages of the poor. The n.o.ble-hearted captain of the vessel was a son of Field-Marshal Burgoyne; Captain Coles, her inventor; a son of Mr.

Childers, the then First Lord of the Admiralty; the younger son of Lord Northbrook; the third son of Lord Herbert of Lea; and Lord Lewis Gordon, brother of the Marquis of Huntley, were among the victims of that terrible morning. The intelligence arrived during the excitement caused by the defeat and capitulation of Sedan, which, involving, as it did, the deposition of the Emperor and the fate of France, was naturally the great topic of discussion, but for the time it overshadowed even those great events, for it was a national calamity.

From the statements of survivors we now know that the watch had been called a few minutes past midnight; and as the men were going on deck to muster, the s.h.i.+p gave a terrible lurch to starboard, soon, however, righting herself on that occasion. Robert Hirst, a seaman, who afterwards gave some valuable testimony, was on the forecastle. There was a very strong wind, and the s.h.i.+p was then only carrying her three top-sails, double reefs in each, and the foretop-mast stay-sail. The yards were braced sharp up, and the s.h.i.+p had little way upon her.(44) As the watch was mustered, he heard Captain Burgoyne give the order, "Let go the foretop-sail halyards!" followed by, "Let go fore and maintop-sail sheets!" By the time the men got to the top-sail sheets the s.h.i.+p was heeling over to starboard so much that others were being washed off the deck, the s.h.i.+p lying down on her side, as she was gradually turning over and trembling through her whole frame with every blow which the short, jumping, vicious seas, now white with the squall, gave her.(45) The roar of the steam from her boilers was terrific, "outscreaming the noise of the storm," but not drowning the shrieks of the poor engineers and stokers which were heard by some of the survivors. The horrors of their situation can be imagined. The sea, breaking down the funnel, would soon, no doubt, extinguish the furnaces, but not until some of their contents had been dashed into the engine-room, with oceans of scalding water; the boilers themselves may, likely enough, have given way and burst also. Mercifully, it was not for long. Hirst, with two other men, rushed to the weather-forecastle netting and jumped overboard. It was hardly more than a few moments before they found themselves washed on to the bilge of the s.h.i.+p's bottom, for in that brief s.p.a.ce of time the s.h.i.+p had turned completely over, and almost immediately went down. Hirst and his companions went down with the s.h.i.+p, but the next feeling of consciousness by the former was coming into contact with a floating spar, to which he tied himself with his black silk handkerchief. He was soon, however, washed from the spar, but got hold of the stern of the second launch, which was covered with canvas, and floating as it was stowed on board the s.h.i.+p. Other men were there, on the top of the canvas covering. Immediately after, they fell in with the steam-lifeboat pinnace, bottom-up, with Captain Burgoyne and several men clinging to it. Four men, of whom Mr.

May,(46) the gunner, was one, jumped from off the bottom of the steam-pinnace to the launch. One account says that Captain Burgoyne incited them, by calling out, "Jump, men, jump!" but did not do it himself. The canvas was immediately cut away, and with the oars free, they attempted to pull up to the steam-pinnace to rescue the captain and others remaining there. This they found impossible to accomplish. As soon as they endeavoured to get the boat's head up to the sea to row her to windward to where the capsized boat was floating, their boat was swamped almost level to her thwarts, and two of the men were washed clean out of her. The pump was set going, and the boat bailed out with their caps, &c., as far as possible. They then made a second attempt to row the boat against the sea, which was as unsuccessful as before. Meantime, poor Burgoyne was still clinging to the pinnace, in "a storm of broken waters." When the launch was swept towards him once, one of the men on board offered to throw him an oar, which he declined, saying, n.o.bly, "For G.o.d's sake, men, keep your oars: you will want them." This piece of self-abnegation probably cost him his life, for he went down shortly after, following "the six hundred" of his devoted crew into "the valley of death." The launch was beaten hither and thither; and a quarter of an hour after the _Captain_ had capsized, sighted the lights of one of their own s.h.i.+ps, which was driven by in the gale, its officers knowing nothing of the fate of these unfortunates, or their still more hapless companions. Mr. May, the gunner, took charge of the launch, and at daybreak they sighted Cape Finisterre, inside which they landed after twelve hours' hard work at the oars.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "CAPTAIN" IN THE BAY OF BISCAY.]

One man, when he found the vessel capsizing, crawled over the weather-netting on the port side, and performed an almost incredible feat.

It is well told in his own laconic style:-"Felt s.h.i.+p heel over, and felt she would not right. Made for weather-hammock netting. She was then on her beam-ends. Got along her bottom by degrees, as she kept turning over, until I was where her keel would have been if she had one. The seas then washed me off. I saw a piece of wood about twenty yards off, and swam to it." In other words, he got over her side, and walked _up_ to the bottom!

While in the water, two poor drowning wretches caught hold of him, and literally tore off the legs of his trousers. He could not help them, and they sank for the last time.

Many and varied were the explanations given of the causes of this disaster. There had evidently been some uneasiness in regard to her stability in the water at one time, but she had sailed so well on previous trips, in the same stormy waters, that confidence had been restored in her. The belief, afterwards, among many authorities, was that she ought not to have carried sail at all.(47) This was the primary cause of the disaster, no doubt; and then, in all probability, when the force of the wind had heeled her over, a heavy sea struck her and completely capsized her-the water on and over her depressed side a.s.sisting by weighting her downwards. The side of the hurricane-deck acted, when the vessel was heeled over, as one vast sail, and, no doubt, had much to do with putting her on her beam-ends. The general impression of the survivors appeared to be that, with the s.h.i.+p heeling over, the pressure of a strong wind upon the under part of the hurricane-deck had a greater effect or leverage upon the hull, than the pressure of the wind on her top-sails. They were also nearly unanimous in their opinion that when the _Captain's_ starboard side was well down in the water, with the weight of water on the turret-deck, and the pressure of the wind blowing from the port hand on the under surface of the hurricane-deck, and thus pus.h.i.+ng the s.h.i.+p right over, she had no chance of righting herself again.

It is to be remarked that long after the _Captain_ had sunk, the admiral of the squadron thought that he saw her, although it was very evident afterwards that it must have been some other vessel. In his despatch to the Admiralty,(48) which very plainly indicated that he had some anxiety in regard to her stability in bad weather, he described her appearance and behaviour up till 1.30 a.m.-more than an hour after her final exit to the depths below. In the days of superst.i.tious belief, so common among sailors, a thrilling story of her image haunting the spot would surely have been built on this foundation.

In the old fighting-days of the Royal Navy, when success followed success, and prize after prize rewarded the daring and enterprise of its commanders, they did not think very much of the loss of a vessel more or less, but took the lesser evils with the greater goods. The seamans.h.i.+p was wonderful, but it was very often utterly reckless. A captain trained in the school of Nelson and Cochrane would stop at nothing. The country, accustomed to great naval battles, enriched by the spoils of the enemy-who furnished some of the finest vessels in our fleet-was not much affected by the loss of a s.h.i.+p, and the Admiralty was inclined to deal leniently with a spirited commander who had met with an accident. But then an accident in those days did not mean the loss of half a million pounds or so. The cost of a large ironclad of to-day would have built a small wooden fleet of those days.

The loss of the _Captain_ irresistibly brings to memory another great loss to the Royal Navy, which occurred nearly ninety years before, and by which 900 lives were in a moment swept into eternity. It proved too plainly that "wooden walls" might capsize as readily as the "crankiest" ironclad. The reader will immediately guess that we refer to the loss of the _Royal George_, which took place at Spithead, on the 28th of August, 1782, in calm weather, but still under circ.u.mstances which, to a very great extent, explain how the _Captain_-at the best, a vessel of doubtful stability-capsized in the stormy waters of Biscay. The _Royal George_ was, at the time, the oldest first-rate in the service, having been put into commission in 1755. She carried 108 guns, and was considered a staunch s.h.i.+p, and a good sailer. Anson, Boscawen, Rodney, Howe, and Hawke had all repeatedly commanded in her.

From what small causes may great and lamentable disasters arise! "During the was.h.i.+ng of her decks, on the 28th, the carpenter discovered that the pipe which admitted the water to cleanse and sweeten the s.h.i.+p, and which was about three feet under the water, was out of repair-that it was necessary to replace it with a new one, and to heel her on one side for that purpose." The guns on the port side of the s.h.i.+p were run out of the port-holes as far as they would go, and those from the starboard side were drawn in and secured amids.h.i.+ps. This brought her porthole-sills on the lower side nearly even with the water. "At about 9 o'clock a.m., or rather before," stated one of the survivors,(49) "we had just finished our breakfast, and the last lighter, with rum on board, had come alongside; this vessel was a sloop of about fifty tons, and belonged to three brothers, who used her to carry things on board the men-of-war. She was lashed to the larboard side of the _Royal George_, and we were piped to clear the lighter and get the rum out of her, and stow it in the hold....

At first, no danger was apprehended from the s.h.i.+p being on one side, although the water kept das.h.i.+ng in at the portholes at every wave; and there being mice in the lower part of the s.h.i.+p, which were disturbed by the water which dashed in, they were hunted in the water by the men, and there had been a rare game going on." Their play was soon to be rudely stopped. The carpenter, perceiving that the s.h.i.+p was in great danger, went twice on the deck to ask the lieutenant of the watch to order the s.h.i.+p to be righted; the first time the latter barely answered him, and the second replied, savagely, "If you can manage the s.h.i.+p better than I can, you had better take the command." In a very short time, he began himself to see the danger, and ordered the drummer to beat to right s.h.i.+p. It was too late-the s.h.i.+p was beginning to sink; a sudden breeze springing upheeled her still more; the guns, shot, and heavy articles generally, and a large part of the men on board, fell irresistibly to the lower side; and the water, forcing itself in at every port, weighed the vessel down still more. She fell on her broadside, with her masts nearly flat on the water, and sank to the bottom immediately. "The officers, in their confusion, made no signal of distress, nor, indeed, could any a.s.sistance have availed if they had, after her lower-deck ports were in the water, which forced itself in at every port with fearful velocity." In going down, the main-yard of the _Royal George_ caught the boom of the rum-lighter and sank her, drowning some of those on board.

At this terrible moment there were nearly 1,200 persons(50) on board.

Deducting the larger proportion of the watch on deck, about 230, who were mostly saved by running up the rigging, and afterwards taken off by the boats sent for their rescue, and, perhaps, seventy others who managed to scramble out of the ports, &c., the whole of the remainder perished.

Admiral Kempenfelt, whose flag-s.h.i.+p it was, and who was then writing in his cabin, and had just before been shaved by the barber, went down with her. The first-captain tried to acquaint him that the s.h.i.+p was sinking, but the heeling over of the s.h.i.+p had so jammed the doors of the cabin that they could not be opened. One young man was saved, as the vessel filled, by the force of the water rus.h.i.+ng upwards, and sweeping him bodily before it through a hatchway. In a few seconds, he found himself floating on the surface of the sea, where he was, later, picked up by a boat. A little child was almost miraculously preserved by a sheep, which swam some time, and with which he had doubtless been playing on deck. He held by the fleece till rescued by a gentleman in a wherry. His father and mother were both drowned, and the poor little fellow did not even know their names; all that he knew was that his own name was Jack. His preserver provided for him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WRECK OF THE "ROYAL GEORGE."]

One of the survivors,(51) who got through a porthole, looked back and saw the opening "as full of heads as it could cram, all trying to get out. I caught," said he, "hold of the best bower-anchor, which was just above me, to prevent falling back again into the porthole, and seizing hold of a woman who was trying to get out of the same porthole, I dragged her out."

The same writer says that he saw "all the heads drop back again in at the porthole, for the s.h.i.+p had got so much on her larboard side _that the starboard portholes were as upright as if the men had tried to get out of the top of a __chimney, with nothing for their legs and feet to act upon_." The sinking of the vessel drew him down to the bottom, but he was enabled afterwards to rise to the surface and swim to one of the great blocks of the s.h.i.+p which had floated off. At the time the s.h.i.+p was sinking, an open barrel of tar stood on deck. When he rose, it was floating on the water like fat, and he got into the middle of it, coming out as black as a negro minstrel!

When this man had got on the block he observed the admiral's baker in the shrouds of the mizentop-mast, which were above water not far off; and directly after, the poor woman whom he had pulled out of the porthole came rolling by. He called out to the baker to reach out his arm and catch her, which was done. She hung, quite insensible, for some time by her chin over one of the ratlines of the shrouds, but a surf soon washed her off again.

She was again rescued shortly after, and life was not extinct; she recovered her senses when taken on board our old friend the _Victory_, then lying with other large s.h.i.+ps near the _Royal George_. The captain of the latter was saved, but the poor carpenter, who did his best to save the s.h.i.+p, was drowned.

In a few days after the _Royal George_ sank, bodies would come up, thirty or forty at a time. A corpse would rise "so suddenly as to frighten any one." The watermen, there is no doubt, made a good thing of it; they took from the bodies of the men their buckles, money, and watches, and then made fast a rope to their heels and towed them to land." The writer of the narrative from which this account is mainly derived says that he "saw them towed into Portsmouth Harbour, in their mutilated condition, in the same manner as rafts of floating timber, and promiscuously (for particularity was scarcely possible) put into carts, which conveyed them to their final sleeping-place, in an excavation prepared for them in Kingstown churchyard, the burial-place belonging to the parish of Portsea." Many bodies were washed ash.o.r.e on the Isle of Wight.

Futile attempts were made the following year to raise the wreck, but it was not till 1839-40 that Colonel Pasley proposed, and successfully carried out, the operations for its removal. Wrought-iron cylinders, some of the larger of which contained over a ton each of gunpowder, were lowered and fired by electricity, and the vessel was, by degrees, blown up. Many of the guns, the capstans, and other valuable parts of the wreck were recovered by the divers, and the timbers formed then, and since, a perfect G.o.dsend to some of the inhabitants of Portsmouth, who manufactured them into various forms of "relics" of the _Royal George_. It is said that the sale of these has been so enormous that if they could be collected and stuck together they would form several vessels of the size of the fine old first-rate, large as she was! But something similar has been said of the "wood of the true cross," and, no doubt, is more than equally libellous.

It is said, by those who descended to the wreck, that its appearance was most beautiful, when seen from about a fathom above the deck. It was covered with seaweeds, sh.e.l.ls, starfish, and anemones, while from and around its ports and openings the fish, large and small, swam and played-darting, flas.h.i.+ng, and sparkling in the clear green water.

[Ill.u.s.tration: H.M.S. _VANGUARD_ AT SEA.]

There is probably no reasonable being in or out of the navy who does not believe that the ironclad is the war-vessel of the immediate future. But that a woeful amount of uncertainty, as thick as the fog in which the _Vanguard_ went down, envelops the subject in many ways, is most certain.

The circ.u.mstances connected with that great disaster are still in the memory of the public, and were simple and distinct enough. During the last week of August, 1875, the reserve squadron of the Channel Fleet, comprising the _Warrior_, _Achilles_, _Hector_, _Iron Duke_, and _Vanguard_, with Vice-Admiral Sir W. Tarleton's yacht _Hawk_, had been stationed at Kingstown. At half-past ten on the morning of the 1st of September they got into line for the purpose of proceeding to Queenstown, Cork. Off the Irish lights.h.i.+p, which floats at sea, six miles off Kingstown, the _Achilles_ hoisted her ensign to say farewell-her destination being Liverpool. The sea was moderate, but a fog came on and increased in density every moment. Half an hour after noon, the "look-out"

could not distinguish fifty yards ahead, and the officers on the bridge could not see the bowsprit. The s.h.i.+ps had been proceeding at the rate of twelve or fourteen knots, but their speed had been reduced when the fog came on, and they were running at not more than half the former speed. The _Vanguard_ watch reported a sail ahead, and the helm was put hard aport to prevent running it down. The _Iron Duke_ was then following close in the wake of the _Vanguard_, and the action of the latter simply brought them closer, and presented a broadside to the former, which, unaware of any change, had continued her course. The commander of the _Iron Duke_, Captain Hickley, who was on the bridge at the time, saw the spectre form of the _Vanguard_ through the fog, and ordered his engines to be reversed, but it was too late. The ram of the _Iron Duke_ struck the _Vanguard_ below the armour-plates, on the port side, abreast of the engine-room. The rent made was very large-amounting, as the divers afterwards found, to four feet in width-and the water poured into the hold in torrents. It might be only a matter of minutes before she should go down.(52)

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LOSS OF THE "VANGUARD."]

The vessel was doomed; a very brief examination proved that: nothing remained but to save the lives of those on board. Captain Dawkins gave the necessary orders with a coolness which did not represent, doubtless, the conflicting feelings within his breast. The officers ably seconded him, and the crew behaved magnificently. One of the mechanics went below in the engine-room to let off the steam, and so prevent an explosion, at the imminent risk of his life. The water rose quickly in the after-part, and rushed into the engine and boiler rooms, eventually finding its way into the provision-room flat, through imperfectly fastened (so-called) "water-tight" doors, and gradually over the whole s.h.i.+p. There was no time to be lost. Captain Dawkins called out to his men that if they preserved order all would be saved. The men stood as at an inspection-not one moved until ordered to do so. The boats of both s.h.i.+ps were lowered. While the launching was going on, the swell of the tide caused a lifeboat to surge against the hull, and one of the crew had his finger crushed. This was absolutely the only casualty. In twenty minutes the whole of the men were transferred to the _Iron Duke_, no single breach of discipline occurring beyond the understandable request of a sailor once in awhile to be allowed to make one effort to secure some keepsake or article of special value to himself. But the order was stern: "Boys, come instantly." As "four bells"

(2 p.m.) was striking, the last man having been received on the _Iron Duke_, the doomed vessel whirled round two or three times, and then sank in deep water.(53)

It is obvious, then, that the discipline and courage of the service had not deteriorated from that always expected in the good old days. Captain Dawkins was the last man to leave his sinking s.h.i.+p, and his officers one and all behaved in the same spirit. They endeavoured to quiet and rea.s.sure the men-pointing out to them the fatal consequences of confusion. Captain Dawkins may or may not have been rightly censured for his seamans.h.i.+p; there can be no doubt that he performed his duty n.o.bly in these systematic efforts to save his crew. However much was lost to the nation, no mother had to mourn the loss of her sailor-boy; no wife had been made a widow, no child an orphan; five hundred men had been saved to their country.

One of the officers of the _Vanguard_, in a letter to a friend, graphically described the scene at and after the collision. After having lunched, he entered the ward-room, where he encountered the surgeon, Dr.

Fisher, who was reading a newspaper. "After remarking on the thickness of the fog, Fisher went to look out of one of the ports, and immediately cried out, 'G.o.d help us! here is a s.h.i.+p right into us!' We rushed on deck, and at that moment the _Iron Duke_ struck us with fearful force, spars and blocks falling about, and causing great danger to us on deck. The _Iron Duke_ then dropped astern, and was lost sight of in the fog. The water came into the engine-room in tons, stopping the engines, putting the fires out, and nearly drowning the engineers and stokers.... The s.h.i.+p was now reported sinking fast, although all the water-tight compartments had been closed. But in consequence of the shock, some of the water-tight doors leaked fearfully, letting water into the other parts of the s.h.i.+p.

Minute-guns were being fired, and the boats were got out.... At this moment the _Iron Duke_ appeared, lowering her boats and sending them as fast as possible. The sight of her cheered us up, as we had been frightened that she would not find us in the fog, in spite of the guns.

The scene on deck can only be realised by those who have witnessed a similar calamity. The booming of the minute-guns, the noise of the immense volume of steam rus.h.i.+ng out of the escape-funnel, and the orders of the captain, were strangely mingled, while a voice from a boat reported how fast she was sinking."