the ship could not bear it. But the lieutenant gave him a very short answer, and the carpenter then went below. The captain's name was Waghorn. He was on board, but where I do not know: -however captains, if anything is to be done while the ship is in harbour, seldom interfere, but leave it all to the officer of the watch. The lieutenant was, if I remember right, the third lieutenant, his name I do not recollect; he was a good-sized man, between thirty and forty. In a very short time the carpenter came up again, and asked the lieutenant of the watch again to right ship, because she could not bear it; but the lieutenant replied, "Sir, if you can manage the ship better than I can, you had better take the command." I, and a good many more, were at the waist of the ship and at the gangways, and heard what passed, and began to be aggrieved, for we knew the danger. In a very short time, the lieutenant ordered the drummer to be called to beat to right ship. The drummer was called in a moment, and as the ship was beginning to sink, I jumped off the gangway as soon as he was called. There was no time to beat his drum, and I do not know that he had even time to get it. I ran down to my station, and by the time I had got there, the men were tumbling down the hatchways one over another, to get to their stations as quick as possible to right ship. My station was at the third gun from the head of the ship on the larboard side of the lower gun-deck, close by where the cable passes; indeed it was just abaft the bight of the cable. I said to the lieutenant of our gun, whose name was Carrel (for every gun has a captain and a lieutenant, though they are only sailors), "Let us try to bouse our gun out without waiting for the drum, as it will help to right ship." We pushed the gun, but it ran back on us, and we could not start it. The water then rushed in at most of the port-holes on the larboard side of the lower gun-deck, and I said to Carrel, "Ned, lay hold of the ring-bolt, and jump out at the port-hole; the ship is sinking, and we shall all be drowned." He jumped out, but I believe he was drowned, as I never saw him again. I got out at the same port-hole, and when I had done so, I saw the port-hole as full of heads as it could cram, all trying to get out; I caught hold of the best bower-anchor, which was just above me, to prevent my falling back again into the port-hole, and seized hold of a woman who was trying to get out, and dragged her out. The ship was full of Jews, women, and people selling all sorts of things. I threw the woman from me, and just after that the air that was between decks drafted out at the port-holes very quickly. It was quite a huff of wind, and blew me off my feet. The ship then sunk in a moment. I tried to swim, but could not, though I plunged as hard as I could, both hands and feet. The sinking of the ship drew me down, but when it touched the bottom, the water boiled up a great deal, and then I felt that I could swim, and began to rise. At the time the ship was sinking, there was a barrel of tar on the starboard side of her deck, and that had rolled to the larboard and staved as the ship went down; and when I rose to the surface the tar was floating like fat on the top of a boiler; I got the tar about my hair and face, but I struck it away as well as I could. When my head came above water I heard the cannon ashore firing for distress. I looked about, and saw the maintop sail halyard block above water, and swam to it, got upon it, and there I rode. The fore, main, and mizen tops were all above water, as were a part of the bowsprit and part of the ensign staff, with the ensign upon it. The captain of the Royal George, who could not swim, was picked up and saved by one of our seamen. The lieutenant of the watch, I believe, was drowned. The number of persons who lost their lives I cannot state with any degree of accuracy, because of there being so many Jews, women, and other persons on board who did not belong to the ship. The complement of the ship was nominally 1,000 men, but it was not full. Some were ashore, and sixty marines had gone ashore that morning. Government allowed 57. each to the seamen who were saved, for the loss of their things. I saw the list, and there were only seventy-five. Many of the best men were in the hold stowing away the rum-casks; they must have all perished, and so must many men who were slinging the casks in the sloop. Two of the three brothers belonging to the sloop were drowned, but the third was saved. I have no doubt that the men caught hold of each other, and drowned one another,—those who could not swim taking hold of those who could; and there is little doubt that as many got into the launch3 as could cram into her, hoping to save themselves in that way, and all perished in her together. In a few days after the Royal George sunk, bodies would come up, forty or fifty at a time. The watermen made a good thing of it: they would take from the bodies of the men their buckles, money, and watches, and then make fast a rope to their heels and tow them to land. The water-cock ought to have been put to rights before the immense quantity of shot was put on board; but if the lieutenant of the watch had given the order to right ship a couple of minutes earlier when the carpenter first spoke to him, nothing amiss would have happened, as three or four men at each tackle of the starboard guns would very soon have boused the guns all out, and have righted the ship. When this happened, the Royal George was anchored by two anchors from the head, The wind was rather from the north-west, not much of it—only a bit of a breeze; and there was no sudden gust of wind which made her heel just before she sunk; it was the weight of metal and the water which had dashed in through the port holes which sank her, not the effect of the wind upon her. Indeed, I do not recollect that she had even what is called a stitch of canvass, to keep her head steady as she lay at anchor.-Perils and Adventures on the Deep.' 1. Carronade-a short piece of ordnance, having a large calibre, and a chamber for the powder, like a mortar. This species of cannon is carried on the upper works of ships, as the poop and forecastle, and is very useful in close engagements. The word comes from Carron, the celebrated iron works in Scotland, where they were first made. 2. A large open flat-bottomed boat, used in loading and unloading ships. 3. The name given to the largest boat carried by a man-of-war. It is lower and more flat-bottomed than a long boat. THE LOSS OF THE ROYAL GEORGE. TOLL for the brave! The brave that are no more! Eight hundred of the brave, A land breeze shook the shrouds, Down went the Royal George With all her crew complete. Toll for the brave! It was not in the battle, His sword was in its sheath, When Kempenfelt went down,* Weigh the vessel up, Once dreaded by our foes! And mingle with our cup The tear that England owes. Her timbers yet are sound, And she may float again, Full charged with England's thunder, But Kempenfelt is gone; And he and his eight hundred COWPER. Electrical. Connected. THE effect and uses of the Ocean are so intermingled with what the human race are essentially concerned with, that they could not have lived as they have done, if indeed at all, without it. It forms a most important portion of our terrestrial economy. It separates, and yet unites, mankind. It keeps nations apart from each other, and in mutual ignorance and seclusion, so long as they are to be unknown and unvisited by each other. But it also presents the easiest channel of their communications and intercourse together, as soon as the time arrives in which they are to have mutual dealings and intercourse. By the protracted separation, each is preserved in its distinctness, until grown up into its designed peculiarities; and is caused to remain in them until the diversity is sufficiently formed in body, in habits, and in mind. Then, when the variety is secured, they are, as the intended period arrives, brought, by a train of directed causes or influencing incidents, into mutual contact and knowledge. The Ocean is likewise a vast agent in the production of clouds and winds, and all the electrical changes of the atmosphere; for the largest quantity of aqueous evaporation is ever rising from it. It is the home of the great fish world, and the natural bed and soil for all the testaceous genera and coral animals, for the cetaceous tribes, the marine animalculæ, and for classes of vegetation peculiarly its own. For these innumerable myriads of organized life it has, therefore, been created, as well as for the agencies which it excites, and the phenomena which it occasions to the inanimate departments of our earth. Man only traverses it; he would indeed probably inhabit it, with a large portion of his multiplying population, if its rolling billows, and currents, and agitating tempests, did not unfit it for any comfortable or permanent inhabitation. Some birds of the aquatic kind resort to it for food and pleasure, and the Penguin, so curious for her arranged societies and vast colonial multiplication, is found to use and enjoy it, more extensively than a land bird could have been expected to have ventured.' We find also many other species of birds hovering over the seas at considerable distances from land; and we know that the Tortoise order navigate them to remote shores for parental purposes. A large species of serpent class has been also reported to exist in several parts of it.2 Facts like these indicate that the Ocean has been made for the use and enjoyment of several orders of the animal kingdom, as well as for objects connected with human transactions and improvements; indeed far more for what is important and interesting to the other classes of animated nature, than for our race, though the king of all. It is associated with our convenience; but it is daily fulfilling designs and ends with which we have no immediate concern.-TURNER'S 'Sacred History.' 1. The expression here, as elsewhere | Serpent, which has often been reported in this extract, is rather awkward. Can as seen, but which has never been you improve it in any way? brought to land yet. 2. He refers here to the great Sea ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN. O THOU vast ocean! ever-sounding sea! |
