Pierre Everaert, with a cargo of oil and canvas for Marseilles, having
on board a crew of seven persons, including the captain and his nephew,
a boy fourteen years of age. At seven o’clock in the evening of Monday,
November 16, she was lying to in a gale of wind, when she was struck by
a heavy sea and turned bottom up. There was one man on deck at the time;
he was instantly drowned. There were three seamen in the forecastle, two
of whom, by seizing hold of the windlass bitts, succeeded in getting up
close to the kelson, and so kept their heads above water. The third,
letting go his hold, was drowned, and his body was never again seen. The
other two, discovering that the bulkhead between the forecastle and the
hold was started and that the cargo had fallen down on the deck, drew
themselves towards the stern of the ship, with their faces close to the
kelson. When the vessel capsized, the captain, mate, and boy were in the
cabin. The mate wrenched open the trap hatch in the deck, cleared a
vacant space there, and then scrambling up into it, he took the boy from
the hands of the captain, whom he assisted to follow them. In about an
hour they were joined by the two men from forward, who managed to scrape
along the kelson to where they were. They are now described as five
individuals, closely cooped together, so that as they sat they were
obliged to bend their bodies for want of height above them, whilst the
water reached as high as their waists. The only relief they could obtain
was by one of them at a time stretching at full length on the barrels in
the hold, taking care, however, to keep close to the kelson, where the
air was. The 17th and 18th passed. They were without food and without
water, and, as might be supposed from their situation, as certainly
doomed as if they already lay dead at the bottom of the sea. They could
distinguish between day and night by the light in the sea that was
reflected up from the cabin skylight and thence into the space where
they lay through the hatch in the cabin floor. In the middle of
Wednesday night, the 18th, the vessel struck. At the third blow the
stern dropped to such an extent that the men were forced forward towards
the bows. Whilst making their way one of them fell down through the
cabin floor and skylight, and was drowned. They noticed presently that
the water was ebbing; on which the mate dropped into the cabin to seek
for a hatchet that they might cut their way out, but, the water suddenly
rising, he had to fly again to his former shelter. At last the day
dawned, and then, perceiving a point of rock sticking into the vessel,
they knew that she was hard and fast ashore. The quarter of the ship
being stove, the captain looked through the rent there and cried out in
French, “Thank God, my children, we are saved! I see a man on the
beach.” Shortly afterwards the man approached and put in his hand, which
the captain seized, to the terror of the fellow, who nearly died of
fright. Several persons arrived, the side of the vessel was opened, and
the four men were liberated, after having been entombed for three days
and three nights.
Any reference to such a subject as the curiosities of marine disaster
must include this amazing narrative, thrice told as it may be. As an
escape there is nothing to be compared to it in the maritime annals,
though to be sure there is no lack of examples of miraculous salvation
from capsizals. The spot where the _Nerina_ struck is Porthellick, in
St. Mary’s, Scilly. Two incidents in connection with this wreck increase
the wonder of it. First, the want of fresh air threatening the men with
death by suffocation, the mate worked with the desperation of a dying
man almost incessantly for two days and one night to cut a hole with his
knife through the hull. The knife broke; but for this the hole would
have been made, with the result that the vessel must have instantly
foundered owing to the liberation of the air that alone kept her
buoyant. Second, it was afterwards shown that during the afternoon of
Wednesday, the 18th, the wreck had been fallen in with, at about five
miles from the island, by two pilot boats which towed her for an hour,
but the ropes parting, the night approaching, and the weather looking
dirty, they abandoned her, little conceiving that there were human
beings alive in her hold. Had the vessel not been towed, the set of the
current would have carried the wreck clear of the islands into the
Atlantic!
The relater of this remarkable story states in a note that the account
was furnished to him by Mr. Richard Pearce, Consular Agent for France.
“As this gentleman,” he adds, “took great care in his examination of the
case, there cannot be a doubt of its correctness throughout.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_INFERNAL MACHINES._
The invention of a small fabric that sinks under water and rises to the
surface at the will of her occupants should indicate a large approach
towards the perfecting of the whole theory and practice of submarine
warfare. Such a deadly, dangerous engine of destruction has been tried
and not found wanting. Unhappily, I think; for unless the murderous
inventions of our times are ultimately to render warfare impossible, by
occasioning a common dread because of the swiftness and magnitude of the
butchery—a probability not to be contemplated—one cannot but wish that
the patentee would suffer some of the old elements of manhood to dignify
and animate the conflicts of fleets and armies, by a succession of
failures in the direction of a hidden and annihilating machinery. “So
violent it is,” writes honest old Camden, of the cannon, “in breaking,
tearing, bruising, renting, razing, and ruinating walles, towers,
castles, ramparts, and all that it encountereth; that it might seem to
have been invented by practice of the Devill to the destruction of
mankinde as the onely enemy of true valour and manfull couragiousness,
by murthering afar off.” Murthering afar off! very different, indeed, as
a means of exemplifying courage from the hand-to-hand conflict of the
sword and the spear. So Camden implies, speaking of the cannon of his
time, a weapon that even the long-tailed guardians of the Taku forts
twenty-five years ago would have disdained for their own jingalls. But
what would that mostly learned Clarenceux, King of Arms, have found to
say on the subject of “true valour and manfull couragiousness” had his
theme, instead of the primitive engine whereof the effects as he himself
describes were “destruction, violence, fury, and roaring crack,” been an
electric boat in which men could go about their duties whilst under
water, in which they could softly and hiddenly sneak under the keel of
an ironclad of twelve thousand tons, containing a company of perhaps a
thousand souls, and attach to her a machine that—after they had
withdrawn, still under water, to a safe distance—would blow her and her
people into fragments? This craft is no mere fancy; she is an
accomplished fact, as the French say. It is not long since that the
inventors tested her in the West India Docks. She is a cigar-shaped
boat, sixty feet long, and displaces about fifty tons. They sank and
raised her readily, kept her under water for some time, and then
propelled her. I read that a supply of air—of fresh air—large enough to
last for three days, may be stored in this terrible boat, so that the
Jonahs who man her will be perhaps better off in the matter of oxygen or
ozone than are the occupants of the common above-sea forecastle, even
when their hatch is open.
Of course the electric feature is the novelty in this latest invented
diving boat. But as a fabric that can be made to float or sink, as those
who are inside her may choose, this screw-craft is by no means the first
of her kind. In 1801 Fulton experimented with what he called a
_Bateau-Poisson_, or fish-boat at Rouen. The first account of this
invention says that the boat sank and rose seven or eight times. The
longest period during which it remained under water was eight minutes.
The machine was entered by means of an opening shaped like a tunnel.
“When those who conducted the experiment wished to descend into the
river, and disappear, they let down this opening and lost all
communication with the external air. The inventors of this ingenious
machine are Americans, the principal of whom is called Fulton. Three of
them went into the boat, and remained during the experiment. The Prefect
and a vast concourse of spectators were present.”[54] A fuller account,
written by St. Aubin, was printed in 1802. The boat he inspected was in
some respects similar to the one that had been exhibited at Rouen,
Havre, and Brest. He speaks of it as a nautilus, or diving boat,
invented by Mr. Fulton. It could carry eight men, and hold provisions
enough for this number of persons to last twenty days. The inventor had
contrived a reservoir for air large enough to enable the crew to live
under water for eight hours. The boat was of sufficient strength to
plunge one hundred feet deep, and to bear the pressure of water at that
depth. She was furnished with two sails, and when above water presented
the appearance of an ordinary boat. Fulton, in making his experiments at
Havre, not only remained an hour under water with his companions, but
held his boat parallel to the horizon at any given depth. He proved the
compass-points as correctly under water as on the surface, and while
under water “the boat made way at half a league an hour, by means
contrived for that purpose.” At this point M. St. Aubin indulges in the
following prophetical exclamation: “It is not twenty years since all
Europe was astonished at the first ascension of men in balloons; perhaps
in a few years they will not be less surprised to see a flotilla of
diving boats, which, on a given signal, shall, to avoid the pursuit of
an enemy, plunge under water, and rise again several leagues from the
place where they descended. The invention of balloons has hitherto been
of no advantage, because no means have been found to direct their
course. But if such means could be discovered what would become of
camps, cannon, fortresses, and the whole art of war?” He then proceeds
to point out that Fulton’s craft has the advantage of sailing like a
common boat, and also of diving when it is pursued. It was therefore fit
for carrying secret orders to succour a blockaded port and to examine
the force and position of an enemy in their own harbours. He further
tells us that Fulton had already added to his boat a machine by means of
which he blew up a large craft in the port of Brest. He concludes: “What
will become of maritime wars, and where will sailors be found to man
ships of war, when it is a physical certainty that they may every moment
be blown into the air by means of a diving-boat against which no human
foresight could guard them?” St. Aubin does not say how the boat was
sunk and raised, and how it was propelled, when sunk, at the rate of a
mile and a half in an hour. But that Fulton invented such a boat as the
Frenchman describes is indisputable, and it is equally certain that,
although its merit as an invention was remarkable, nothing came of it.
Footnote 54:
_Naval Chronicle_, 1805.
Fulton, however, was not the first. In 1774 a man named Day, who had for
years been thinking over a method of sinking a vessel under water with a
man in it, who should live for a certain time, and then, by his own
agency, rise to the surface, fancied he had hit upon the right way at
last. The story is worth telling, for it involves a singular tragedy.
Day was so sanguine that he determined to test his invention at the
Broads, near Yarmouth. He fitted a Norwich market boat, and sank himself
thirty feet under water, where he remained for twenty-four hours. His
success so elated him that he at once went to work to see how he could
get money by it. He accordingly wrote the following letter to a Mr.
Blake, a well-known sporting man: “Sir, I have found out an affair by
which many thousands may be won. It is of a paradoxical nature, but can
be performed with ease. Therefore, sir, if you chuse to be informed of
it, and give me one hundred pounds of every thousand you shall win by
it, I will very readily wait upon you and inform you of it. I am,
myself, but a poor mechanic, and not able to make anything by it without
your assistance.—Yours, etc., J. DAY.” Blake wrote to Day to call upon
him. They met, and Day said that he could sink a ship one hundred yards
deep in the sea with himself in it, and remain therein for the space of
twenty-four hours without communication with anything above, and at the
expiration of the time rise up again in the vessel. Blake asked for a
model, which in the course of a month was sent to him. He was struck
with the invention, and supplied Day with money enough to enable him to
carry out his scheme. The vessel is described as having a false bottom,
standing on feet “like a butcher’s block,” which contained the ballast,
and by the person unscrewing some pins she was to rise to the surface,
leaving the false bottom behind. Plymouth was selected as the scene of
the experiment. On the appointed day the vessel was towed to the place
agreed upon, the inventor provided himself with whatever he deemed
necessary, entered the vessel, retired to the cabin, and shut up the
valve. The craft settled slowly down in twenty-two feet of water. The
hour was two o’clock in the afternoon of Tuesday, June 28, and she was
to rise again at two o’clock on the following morning. Day had furnished
himself with some buoys or messengers, which he had arranged to send to
the surface to announce his situation below; but none appearing, his
patron, Blake, suspected an accident, and applied to the captain of a
frigate at anchor close by for assistance. But to no purpose; every
effort was made in vain to weigh the vessel, and Day perished.
The comments on the account of which I have given the substance are
curious when read side by side with the recent newspaper narratives of
the experiment at the West India Docks. “That any man should be able,
after having sunk a vessel to so great a depth, to make that vessel at
pleasure so much more specifically lighter than water as thereby to
enable it to force its way to the surface, through the depressure of so
great a weight, is a matter not hastily to be credited.”
But even Day was not first. Cornelius Drebelle, by order of James I. (so
says Robert Boyle), built a vessel to be rowed under water. She was
furnished with a kind of chemical liquor that served to purify and renew
the air. She carried twelve oarsmen besides passengers, and was tried in
the river Thames, and Mr. Robert Boyle, the “Father of Modern Chemistry
and the Brother of the Earl of Cork,” got his account of her from a
person who was in her during her submarine navigation of the river.
And who was before Cornelius Drebelle? “Novelty is only in request,”
says Shakespeare, “and it is dangerous to be aged in any kind of
course.” But what is novelty?[55]
Footnote 55:
Bacon, in his “New Atlantis,” makes the father of Solomon’s House say,
“We have ships and boats for going under water, and brooking of seas;
also swimming girdles and supporters.”
What value the diving vessel of to-day has she owes to conditions which
are scarcely much older than the date of the application of electricity
to purposes of marine locomotion and to naval warfare. And even if you
gave her an electric engine, but provided her with no better apparatuses
of destruction than those which preceded dynamite, gun-cotton, and the
like she could scarcely, for all her twin screws, her forty-five horse
power, her glow lamps, condensed air, and her plates of steel prove more
useful than such a boat as that of Fulton, or as that of Cornelius
Drebelle, which, urged by twelve rowers, swept under the surface of what
was then the silver Thames. Our enormous ordnance and the tremendous
destructive forces which we have received from the laboratory of the
chemist entitle us to smile, perhaps, at the sheet-lightning and faint
thunders of our grandsires’ conflicts. Yet, on the whole, every one must
admit that they made a fine show with what they had. Individually the
sixty-four-pounder would be but a mean weapon, as weapons now go; yet
the flames of a triple row of them caused a mighty blaze, and could one
even now hear the explosion of the broadside batteries of any wooden
liner you may name the aggregate uproar might suggest the detonation of
some greater engine of war than was ever cast at Elswick or at Woolwich.
In submarine machinery the old folks never got further than the Fenians
manage to go; a clock in a barrel of gunpowder defined the extent of
their genius as murderers. On the surface of the water their most
formidable arrangements were the fire-ship and the bomb-vessel, the
latter a ketch very strongly built and equipped with mortars. An example
of what may be termed explosion-machinery dates as far back as 1585. It
was used to destroy the bridge of boats at the siege of Antwerp, and
consisted of a ship in which was built a vault of stone filled with two
hundred barrels of powder, over which were placed stones of all sizes,
together with shot, iron chains, spikes, and so forth. This mine was
exploded by a secret fuse, and was so contrived that the vessel did not
take fire till it bumped against the bridge, which it shivered. There is
extant the description of a fire-ship, called The Infernal, that was
used at the bombardment of St. Maloes in 1693. She was a new galliot of
about three hundred tons. The bottom of her hold was lined with one
hundred barrels of gunpowder, covered with pitch, tar, brimstone, resin,
tow, straw, and faggots. Over these things was a perforated platform,
upon which were three hundred and forty chests or mortars filled with
grenades, cannon-balls, iron chains, loaded firearms, and large pieces
of metal wrapped in tarpaulins. This abominable contrivance proved a
failure, for after it had sailed fairly enough to the foot of the wall
to which it was to be fastened a blast of off-shore wind sent it on to a
rock, where the people in charge were forced to fire her and hastily
withdraw. The chests or mortars were wet, and did not blow up; but the
explosion of what was dry was furious enough to level a part of the town
wall and destroy the roofs and a portion of the walls of about three
hundred houses.
In 1804, the English attempted to blow up some vessels off Boulogne by
casks or coffers furnished with clock-work explosives. A naval officer,
describing the effect of these machines, says: “Each cask was primed and
set, so as to go off at any desired time after drawing out a pin. A
reward depended upon bringing away this pin. We came within pistol shot
of a corvette before we let go our coffers, under a fire of shot and
shells from the shore. The first explosion, which took place in a few
minutes, was very great, and seemed to strike the enemy with general
consternation.”[56] Others were sunk, but would not go off. These
coffers were made of thick plank lined with lead. When filled they were
tarred, covered with canvas, and “payed” with hot pitch. They are
described as exactly resembling a large coffin. They each weighed as
much as two tons. To one end a line was secured to which was affixed a
sort of anchor. Line and anchor were floated with pieces of cork, the
idea being that the anchor would catch the cable of the ship that was to
be destroyed, and cause the coffer to swing alongside. They were
weighted with shot, so that they should only just float, partly that
they might come along unnoticed, and partly that, if seen, they would be
difficult to hit.
Footnote 56:
“Naval Hist. of the Recent War, 1804.”
These primitive and, as a rule, inoperative “dodges” find another
illustration in an experiment made in the Downs in 1805. A large brig
was anchored abreast of Walmer Castle, about three-quarters of a mile
from the shore. Two or three boats then rowed off and placed the machine
across the cable of the brig. The tide in a few moments carried it under
the brig, where it affixed itself. Presently the clock-work exploded the
contents, a small cloud of smoke was seen to rise, and the brig is
declared to have gone to pieces “without any noise or appearance of
fire.” In less than the third of a minute not a vestige of her could be
seen from the shore. “General Don, with a number of military and naval
officers, went with Sir Sydney Smith to Mr. Pitt’s, at Walmer Castle, to
witness the experiment, and expressed the utmost astonishment at the
destructive powers of the invention.” This was evidently much such a
contrivance as the coffers which had been used in the previous year off
Boulogne, with some improvement, as perhaps in its power of sliding with
the tide under instead of alongside a vessel and attaching itself to the
keel.
I find the Americans using clock-work as a means of exploding gunpowder
some time before the period of its adoption by the English. In 1774,
Captain Vandeput, in the _Asia_, of sixty-four guns, whilst stationed
off New York, was nearly blown up by a plan to which, unhappily, we in
these more civilized times are no strangers. A quantity of powder was
put on board a small vessel. In one of the barrels was an alarum or
piece of clock-work, that was wound up before it was placed in the
barrel and attached to a musket lock that fired the powder around it.
The powder was for the use of the _Asia_, and the barrels would have
been received on board together, of course, with that which contained
the clock-work arrangement, but for the terror of one of the American
prisoners who was in the secret and communicated the plot to Vandeput.
There seems a horrible meanness in this manner of waging war. Yet there
is nothing more despicable in blowing up a foe by putting a barrel of
powder with clock-work in it inside his ship than in annihilating him by
means of a coffin load of combustibles fired by clock-work under his
ship.
It has been reserved for this age, however, to carry these theories of
hidden and deadly warfare to a height assuredly never dreamt of by the
most visionary of the old exploders. I call them theories, for so they
must remain till a war shall determine them into facts. And, indeed, I
think it need not be doubted that many of what in peace-time and on
paper we think will be desperately terrible features of all future naval
struggles will prove mere impediments and clumsy, fallible, and
misleading devices when the time to test them comes. Mr. Pitt and the
military officers at Walmer Castle might justly be astonished at the
sight of a stout brig crumbling away under a puff of smoke, but it was
Jack’s old-fashioned pike that was then doing the real work; that had
begun it, and that had to complete it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_QUEER FISH._
I was lately reading an account of two queer fish which had been sent to
the South Kensington Aquarium. One was a trout, three years old, that
was forced to carry its tail hard a starboard—that is, the tail stands
out at right angles with the fish’s body. Whether this deformity is due
to gout, or whether the fish is in the case of the drunken Irishman who,
on becoming sober and discovering that the surgeon at a hospital had
been trying, without result, to put his hip right, cried out, “I was
born so!” I do not know. That a trout should be able to steer a straight
course through the water, however slowly, with his helm hard over,
proves that this kind of fish must have a trick of navigation above the
reach of mortal mariners. The second marine oddity was a stickleback of
the length of a young rat, and extremely like an old mouse. I think I
see these two strokes of nature swimming in company and consoling each
other. We do not require either the fables of Æsop or the maxims of
Rochefoucauld to assure us that there is something in the misfortunes of
our best friends that does not secretly displease us. Possibly the
stickleback in his heart thinks that, on the whole, he would rather look
like a mouse than carry his tail through life athwart ships. On the
other hand, the trout may consider that, though the obligation of having
on all occasions to struggle against a weather helm must weigh heavy on
a life whose essential condition is one of fins, yet, being a fish, it
is better to be distorted as a fish than to carry the emotions of a fish
in the caricature of a mouse. Presuming these to be their confidential
opinions, it may be supposed that their efforts to console each other
would not be entirely wanting in unconscious humour.