_Men have sailed the seas for so many years, and have there done such
amazing things in the face of danger, difficulty and death, that no one
tale of heroism exists which cannot be equalled by at least scores of
others. But since the behaviour of bodies of untried men under trying
circumstances is always interesting, and since I have been put in
possession of some facts not very generally known, I am trying to tell
again the old story of the_ Sarah Sands, _as an example of
long-drawn-out and undefeatable courage and cool-headedness._
She was a small four-masted, iron-built screw-steamer of eleven hundred
tons, chartered to take out troops to India. That was in 1857, the year
of the Indian Mutiny, when anything that could sail or steer was in
great demand; for troops were being thrown into the country as fast as
circumstances allowed—which was not very fast.
Among the regiments sent out was the 54th of the Line, now the Second
Battalion of the Dorset Regiment—a good corps, about a hundred years
old, with a very fair record of service, but in no special way
differing, so far as one could see, from many other regiments. It was
despatched in three ships. The Head-quarters—that is to say, the
Lieutenant-Colonel, the Regimental books, pay-chest, Band and Colours,
which last represent the very soul of a Battalion—and some fourteen
officers, three hundred and fifty-four rank and file, and perhaps a
dozen women, left Portsmouth on the 15th of August all packed tight in
the _Sarah Sands_.
Her crew, with the exception of the engineers and firemen, seem to have
been foreigners and pier-head jumpers picked up at the last minute. They
turned out bad, lazy and insubordinate.
The accommodation for the troops was generously described as “inferior,”
and what men called “inferior” in 1857 would now be called unspeakable.
Nor, in spite of the urgent need, was there any great hurry about the
_Sarah Sands_. She took two long months to reach Capetown, and she
stayed there five days to coal, leaving on the 20th of October. By this
time, the crew were all but openly mutinous, and the troops, who must
have picked up a little seamanship, had to work the ship out of harbour.
On the 7th of November, nearly three weeks later, a squall struck her
and carried away her foremast; and it is to be presumed that the troops
turned to and cleared away the wreckage. On the 11th of November the
real trouble began, for, in the afternoon of that day, ninety days out
from Portsmouth, a party of soldiers working in the hold saw smoke
coming up from the after-hatch. They were then, maybe, within a thousand
miles of the Island of Mauritius, in half a gale and a sea full of
sharks.
Captain Castles, the master, promptly lowered and provisioned the boats;
got them over-side with some difficulty and put the women into them.
Some of the sailors—the engineers, the firemen and a few others behaved
well—jumped into the long-boat, lowered it and kept well away from the
ship. They knew she carried two magazines full of cartridges, and were
taking no chances.
The troops, on the other hand, did not make any fuss, but under their
officers’ orders cleared out the starboard or right-hand magazine,
while volunteers tried to save the Regimental Colours. These stood at
the end of the saloon, probably clamped against the partition behind
the Captain’s chair, and the saloon was full of smoke. Two lieutenants
made a dash thither but were nearly suffocated. A ship’s
quartermaster—Richard Richmond was his name—put a wet cloth over his
face, managed to tear down the Colours, and then fainted. A
private—and his name was W. Wiles—dragged out both Richmond and the
Colours, and the two men dropped senseless on the deck while the
troops cheered. That, at least, was a good beginning; for, as I have
said, the Colours are the soul of every body of men who fight or work
under them.
The saloon must have been one of the narrow, cabin-lined, old-fashioned
“cuddies,” placed above the screw, and all the fire was in the stern of
the ship, behind the engine-room. It was blazing very close to the port
or left-hand magazine, and, as an explosion there would have blown the
_Sarah Sands_ out like a squib they called for more volunteers, and one
of the lieutenants who had been choked in the saloon recovered, went
down first and passed up a barrel of ammunition, which was at once hove
overboard. After this example, work went on with regularity.
When the men taking out the ammunition fainted, as they did fairly
often, they pulled them up with ropes. Those who did not faint, grabbed
what explosives they could feel or handle in the smother, and brought
them up, and an official and serene quartermaster-sergeant stood on the
hatch and jotted down the number of barrels so retrieved in his
notebook, as they were thrown into the sea. They pulled out all except
two barrels which slid from the arms of a fainting man—there was a fair
amount of fainting that evening—and rolled out of reach. Besides these,
there were another couple of barrels of signalling powder for the ship’s
use; but this the troops did not know, and were the more comfortable for
their ignorance.
Then the flames broke through the after-deck, the light attracting
shoals of sharks, and the mizzen-mast—the farthest aft of all the
masts—flared up and went over-side with a crash. This would have veered
the stern of the ship-head to the wind, in which case the flames must
have swept forward; but a man with a hatchet—his name is lost—ran along
the bulwarks and cut the wreck clear, while the boat full of women
surged and rocked at a safe distance, and the sharks tried to upset it
with their tails.
A Captain of the 54th—he was a jovial soul, and made jokes throughout
the struggle—headed a party of men to cut away the bridge, the
deck-cabins, and everything else that was inflammable—this in case of
the flames sweeping forward again—while a provident lieutenant, with
some more troops, lashed spars and things together for a raft, and other
gangs pumped water desperately on to what was left of the saloon and the
magazines.
One record says quaintly: “It was necessary to make some deviation from
the usual military evolutions while the flames were in progress. The men
formed in sections, counter-marched round the forward part of the ship,
which may perhaps be better understood when it is stated that those with
their faces to the after part where the fire raged were on their way to
relieve their comrades who had been working below. Those proceeding
‘forward’ were going to recruit their exhausted strength and prepare for
another attack when it came to their turn.”
No one seemed to have much hopes of saving the ship so long as the last
of the powder was unaccounted for. Indeed, Captain Castles told an
officer of the 54th that the game was up, and the officer replied,
“We’ll fight till we’re driven overboard.” It seemed he would be taken
at his word, for just then the signalling powder and the
ammunition-casks went up, and the ship seen from midships aft looked
like one floating volcano.
The cartridges spluttered like crackers, and cabin doors and timbers
were shot up all over the deck, and two or three men were hurt. But—this
is not in any official record—just after the roar of it, when her stern
was dipping deadlily, and all believed the _Sarah Sands_ was settling
for her last lurch, some merry jester of the 54th cried, “Lights out,”
and the jovial captain shouted back, “All right! We’ll keep the old
woman afloat yet.” Not one man of the troops made any attempt to get on
to the rafts; and when they found the ship was still floating they all
went back to work double tides.
At this point in the story we come across Mr. Frazer, the Scotch
engineer, who, like most of his countrymen, had been holding his
trump-card in reserve. He knew the _Sarah Sands_ was built with a
water-tight bulkhead behind the engine-room and the coal-bunkers; and he
proposed to cut through the bulkhead and pump on the fire. Also, he
pointed out that it would be well to remove the coal in the bunkers, as
the bulkhead behind was almost red-hot, and the coal was catching light.
So volunteers dropped into the bunkers, each man for the minute or two
he could endure it, and shovelled away the singeing, fuming fuel, and
other volunteers were lowered into the bonfire aft, and when they could
throw no more water on it they were pulled up half roasted.
Mr. Frazer’s plan saved the ship, though every particle of wood in the
after part of her was destroyed, and a bluish vapour hung over the
red-hot iron beams and ties, and the sea for miles about looked like
blood under the glare, as they pumped and passed water in buckets,
flooding the stern, sluicing the engine-room bulkhead and damping the
coal beyond it all through the long night. The very sides of the ship
were red-hot, so that they wondered when her plates would buckle and
wrench out the rivets and let the whole affair down to the sharks.
The foremast had carried away on the squall of the 7th of November; the
mizzen-mast, as you know, had gone in the fire; the main-mast, though
wrapped round with wet blankets, was alight, and everything abaft the
main-mast was one red furnace. There was the constant danger of the
ship, now broadside on to the heavy seas, falling off before the heavy
wind, and leading the flames forward again. So they hailed the boats to
tow and hold her head to wind; but only the gig obeyed the order. The
others had all they could do to keep afloat; one of them had been
swamped, though all her people were saved; and as for the long-boat full
of mutinous seamen, she behaved infamously. One record says that “She
not only held aloof, but consigned the ship and all she carried to
perdition.” So the _Sarah Sands_ fought for her own life alone, with the
sharks in attendance.
About three on the morning of the 12th of November, pumping, bucketing,
sluicing and damping, they began to hope that they had bested the fire.
By nine o’clock they saw steam coming up from her insides instead of
smoke, and at mid-day they called in the boats and took stock of the
damage. From the mizzen-mast aft there was nothing that you could call
ship except just the mere shell of her. It was all one steaming heap of
scrap-iron with twenty feet of black, greasy water flooding across the
bent and twisted rods, and in the middle of it all four huge water-tanks
rolled to and fro, thundering against the naked sides.
Moreover,—this they could not see till things had cooled down—the powder
explosions had blown a hole right through her port quarter, and every
time she rolled the sea came in there green. Of the four masts only one
was left; and the rudder-head stuck up all bald, black and horrible
among the jam of collapsed deck-beams. A photograph of the wreck looks
exactly like that of a gutted theatre after the flames and the firemen
have done their worst.
They spent the whole of the 12th of November pumping water out as
zealously as they had pumped it in. They lashed up the loose, charging
tanks as soon as they were cool enough to touch. They plugged the hole
at the stern with hammocks, sails, and planks, and a sail over all. Then
they rigged up a horizontal bar gripping the rudder-head. Six men sat on
planks on one side and six at the other over the empty pit beneath,
hauling on to the bar with ropes and letting go as they were told. That
made the best steering-gear that they could devise.
On the 13th of November, still pumping, they spread one sail on their
solitary mast—it was lucky that the _Sarah Sands_ had started with four
of them—and took advantage of the trade winds to make for Mauritius.
Captain Castles, with one chart and one compass, lived in a tent where
some cabins had once been; and at the end of twelve more days he sighted
land. Their average run was about four knots an hour; and, it is no
wonder that as soon as they were off Port Louis, Mauritius, Mr. Frazer,
the Scotch engineer, wished to start his engines and enter port
professionally. The troops looked down into the black hollow of the ship
when the shaft made its first revolution, shaking the hull horribly; and
if you can realize what it means to be able to see a naked screw-shaft
at work from the upper deck of a liner, you can realize what had
happened to the _Sarah Sands_. They waited outside Port Louis for the
daylight, and were nearly dashed to pieces on a coral reef. Then the
gutted, empty steamer came in—very dirty, the men’s clothes so charred
that they hardly dared to take them off, and very hungry; but without
having lost one single life. Port Louis gave them all a public banquet
in the market place, and the French inhabitants were fascinatingly
polite as only the French can be.
But the records say nothing of what befell the sailors who “consigned
the ship to perdition.” One account merely hints that “this was no time
for retribution”; but the troops probably administered their own justice
during the twelve days’ limp to port. The men who were berthed aft, the
officers and the women, lost everything they had; and the companies
berthed forward lent them clothes and canvas to make some sort of
raiment.
On the 20th of December they were all re-embarked on the _Clarendon_. It
was poor accommodation for heroes. She had been condemned as a
coolie-ship, was full of centipedes and other animals picked up in the
Brazil trade; her engines broke down frequently; and her captain died of
exposure and anxiety during a hurricane. So it was the 25th of January
before she reached the mouth of the Hugli.
By this time—many of the men probably considered this quite as serious
as the fire—the troops were out of tobacco, and when they came across
the American ship _Hamlet_, Captain Lecran, lying at Kedgeree on the way
up the river to Calcutta, the officers rowed over to ask if there was
any tobacco for sale. They told the skipper the history of their
adventures, and he said: “Well, I’m glad you’ve come to me, because I
have some tobacco. How many are you?” “Three hundred men,” said the
officers. Thereupon Captain Lecran got out four hundred pounds of best
Cavendish as well as one thousand Manilla cigars for the officers, and
refused to take payment on the grounds that Americans did not accept
anything from shipwrecked people. They were not shipwrecked at the time,
but evidently they had been shipwrecked quite enough for Captain Lecran,
because when they rowed back a second time and insisted on paying, he
only gave them grog, “which,” says the record, “caused it to be dark
when we returned to our ship.” After this “our band played
‘Yankee-Doodle,’ blue lights were burned, the signal-gun fired”—that
must have been a lively evening at Kedgeree—“and everything in our power
was had recourse to so as to convey to our American cousins our
appreciation of their kindness.”
Last of all, the Commander-in-Chief issued a general order to be read at
the head of every regiment in the Army. He was pleased to observe that
“the behaviour of the 54th Regiment was most praiseworthy, and by its
result must render manifest to all the advantage of subordination and
strict obedience to orders under the most alarming and dangerous
circumstances in which soldiers can be placed.”
This seems to be the moral of the tale.