sending a line on shore, and grog and biscuit served out to all on board.

Three successive attempts to send a line on shore failed. First by a man who was a first-rate swimmer trying to carry one tied round his waist; he failed owing to the immense power of the back draught of water. A line tied to the lifebuoy, in a similar manner, got no further than the ship's head. A shot fired off with a line attached likewise failed. At length the second cutter was lowered with five seamen. She was watched with much anxiety, and, bounding over the rolling breakers, she was tossed safely on the beach.

By this means two large hawsers, attached to anchors in the sand, were made fast to the ship, and presently we observed two large surf boats being conveyed in waggons along the beach towards us. We could plainly distinguish the General and all his Staff, with all the officers of the garrison, foremost among the crowd of at least two thousand people and more who were assembled. Very few seemed to care to watch the convict ship, as it was thought she would certainly be able to hold on, and the belief was the wind would fall with the advancing day.

1 And now I intended to assemble the officers and non-commissioned officers, and to read the service of thanksgiving to the whole of the troops; but the first surf boat being launched in quicker time than I thought possible, and from the still threatening appearance of the weather, I saw that every moment might prove only too precious (as the Captain had no confidence whatever in the ship holding together until dark), and proceeded to make arrangements for the disembarkation, which were shortly done as follows. The women and children to disembark first, the sick second, the detachments of the 27th Regiment and Cape Mounted Rifles third, the 91st by companies, according as the lot should be drawn; and first, I made the lot be drawn as to which wing should first disembark. The right wing gained the draw. Then the companies of the right wing drew. The men to disembark with their new clothing and great-coats on, their knapsacks on their backs, and with their arms and accoutrements. This disembarkation did not commence until half-past eight, and the women, children, and sick were not out of the ship until ten. Of these there were at least a hundred; and of the latter, two men and one woman were in an utterly helpless state. One of the sick men was suffering from the effects of the dreadful typhus fever, which had so fatally attacked us, and we scarcely hoped that he would reach the shore alive.

After the first boatload (the boat carried thirty persons) of the first company for disembarkation had left the ship's side, one of the two boats, which up to that hour had been employed in our

'THE DUKE.'

disembarkation, was taken away from our wreck, to be employedalas! but too fruitlessly-in endeavouring to save the lives of the soldiers, crew, and convicts on board the Waterloo. During all our own pressing anxieties we were, now and then, able to turn our eyes towards our hapless companion. Up to ten o'clock she held on to her anchors, pitching tremendously just outside the line of breakers. On shore it was thought that she would ride it out. Our Captain knew that this was impossible. I was at the lee gangway, superintending the filling and departure of each boat, when a little after ten old Young, who was near, to the Waterloo. Her cables had one after the other parted, and called my attention there she was turned with her broadside to the heavy surf, which, while it rolled her from side to side with tremendous violence, was unable to drive her high into the shoal water. The wind by this time had a little increased. Through its deafening roar, combined with the loud and furious lashing of the resistless surf, no sounds of the human voice, raised to its highest pitch of mortal agony, could reach the ear; but we saw too fearful evidence that piercing sounds were raised to Heaven with all the intensity of despair when we know that the human arm is powerless to save. Suddenly her mainmast went by the board and, in rolling over, tore up part of the quarter-deck with it, and there disclosed clusters of doomed wretches, clinging to every plank and spar which, holding on to others, seemed to give a better chance of safety. One small boat gallantly pushed through the surf, but dared not approach too close to the dissolving wreck and the crowds who would have rushed into her.

The surf boat which had been taken from us had by this time arrived, and, a rope having been got ashore from one part of the wreck, succeeded in saving many. Many an able swimmer leaped into the boiling surge, but his strength availed him nothing there, for so rapidly did the rotten coffin in which these poor creatures had been embarked break up that the masses of floating beams and spars, dashing violently against each other, soon rendered unavailing all a swimmer's art. In twenty minutes from the time her masts went over the side not one fragment of the treacherous sepulchre, which twenty-four hours before bore all the semblance of a good ship, held together to testify that a ship had once floated on the waters. Oh! what a scene of fear and awe our eyes had to look upon! Out of more than three hundred souls about two hundred died then and there. One poor woman, out of several on board, alone was saved. They were the wives of the soldiers of the guard, and she lost her husband and her children. About eighty or ninety were saved. The thousands assembled on the shore, before whose eyes this scene of horror had been enacted, as if satiated with the sight of all this mortal agony, cared not to

remain to witness our fate. Only a few in comparison remained to watch and help us.

Whether it was the sight he had just seen, or the hourly increasing violence of the gale, or any knowledge that he had of our own ship's precarious state, I know not, but in answer to my questions the Captain assured me that he could not answer for the Abercrombie holding together till night. Moreover, they had taken one of the two surf boats from us, and after no further chance remained of saving life on the scene of the Waterloo's destruction, they did not bring this boat back to our wreck, in spite of my earnest messages sent ashore by every boat that went off.

I decided on sacrificing the men's knapsacks and the officers' light baggage, and ordered that the arms alone should be sent down the ship's side.

At eleven o'clock Mrs. Ward and her child left us with her husband. She had behaved remarkably well.

6

At twelve the Adjutant came on board with an order from the Colonel on shore, that I was not to attempt to send the men off by companies, but just as they came.' I told the Adjutant that to that order I would pay no attention, nor would I suffer the interference of any officer of whatever rank who was not on board the wreck, sharing my responsibilities as well as my danger. Our disembarkation now went on regularly, and as fast as one boat could do the work. About twenty-four men were crowded into her, with their arms, at each trip. At a little before three in the afternoon I saw the last batch of the last company safely over the ship's side, and repaired for five minutes to my own cabin, where Cochrane and I had lived together for three months. My faithful servant had, with the assistance of another man, stowed away everything he could, so that in the event, which we did not expect, of the ship holding together, my property might yet be saved. I opened a drawer in my chest in which letters and papers and journals and other (to me) precious remembrances were kept, and looked at them, hesitating whether I might not make an effort to carry them ashore. In that drawer were two Bibles. One the gift of my father years ago, when he presented each of us boys with one; the other the gift of one to whom it had belonged from girlhood, and by whom it had been given to me as the last solemn witness of as true a love as fate ever doomed to be unaccomplished. For some moments conflicting, painful thoughts made me hesitate. Thrice did I take her Bible and leave the other, and twice returned it, until at last the remembrance of who she now is and the thought of how our poor Richard's Bible was so strangely restored to his family, just seven years after his shipwreck and death, decided me on taking its fellow, and leaving all else for the destruction which we felt that night must bring upon our ship.

The Sergeant-Major and a corporal of my own company, who had both refused to leave the wreck until I did, and a few others, now alone remained. With these and Lieutenant Black, the agent, I at length went down the ship's side and, like the rest of us, made our passage through the surf safely to shore. There the General and the greater part of the officers were. Ducat took me up to Sir George Napier, a fine old soldier, who, shaking hands with me, said, 'Captain Gordon, you have done well,' and then proceeded to say that Cochrane and I were to take up our quarters at Government House until we got into barracks, and that his sons would provide us with clothes. All that I brought on shore was my watch, money, and a few articles of linen in a bundle, a spyglass, prayer-book, and Bible.

The whole of the men had ere this reached the barracks, and much needed rest after this tiring and anxious day. As Cochrane and I walked up to the town, from which we were two miles off, the sense of the awful death which had overtaken so many of our shipwrecked fellow-sufferers, and from which ourselves had but just escaped, made a deep and solemn impression on the mind. Every face we met shocked this sense; for it appeared to us, however really grave, to wear an expression of too much gaiety. Before repairing to our comfortable quarters at Government House we went to barracks, to satisfy ourselves that the company was as comfortably provided for as circumstances would admit. And there the poor fellows would not be restrained from hoisting me on their shoulders and carrying me with hurrahing and cheers through the barracks.

Good-bye,

Your affectionate son,

BERTIE GORDON.

There were seven hundred souls on board, nearly a hundred of them women and children, besides sick and dying, and about five hundred troops belonging to the reserve battalion of the 91st and other regiments.

Two or three days after the wreck (August 29), Lieut. Cannon, of the Cape Mounted Riflemen, writes from Cape Town:

During the Saturday night and Sunday morning we were awakened by heavy firing among the shipping, and at daylight perceived our unfortunate ship, with seven hundred souls on board, on a sandbank, and a heavy sea breaking over her, her cables having snapped during the gale. About a cable's length and a half from her, the convict ship Waterloo likewise was ashore, but beating heavily upon the rocks. She was so close to us that we could hear the cries of the poor creatures for help, but, alas! they were beyond

any chance of assistance, the two boats being for a time employed in saving our people. At last the mizzen and main masts went over the side; the ship immediately hove round with her broadside exposed to the tremendous sea. Several of us rode into the sea as far as we could to endeavour to pick up some that each successive wave washed from the weather rigging; but suddenly a sea came on, and in an instant the ship opened and split into ten thousand pieces. The scene, as you can imagine, was now horrible. Such a sight I pray I may never again witness. To conclude this melancholy description, I must tell you that only Mrs. Leigh and fourteen out of thirty of the 90th are alive. Of the convicts and ship's crew, it is supposed at present that more than two hundred perished. One hundred and seventy-five bodies have been picked up on the beach; many were beaten to death amongst the rocks and fragments of the wreck. Our ship, being imbedded in the sand, remained steady, and by the assistance of the large shore boats, and the splendid conduct and example of Captain Bertie Gordon, of the 91st, who was in command of the troops on that awful night, the whole of the women and children and troops and sailors were safely landed on Sunday evening. I rejoice in having been so fortunate as to make the acquaintance of such an intrepid and excellent officer as Captain Gordon. Under his orders this young battalion fell in on the opening decks of the ship (with death in a most frightful form before them) as steadily as on ordinary occasions; and I am assured that during the night, while the ship was striking heavily and they were expecting she would go to pieces as the convict ship did, the men were as quiet and orderly as possible. It was quite frightful to see the boats filled with shrieking women and children, stretching out their arms to us on shore, in the furious sea that was boiling and surging over the ship and threatening to swamp the boats they were in.

That noble fellow, Captain Gordon, after providing for the women and children, disembarked the lads (of the Cape Regiment), and then the detachment of the 27th, before he suffered one of his own men to put foot over the side. The companies of the 91st then drew lots, and disembarked regularly. He was himself almost the last to quit the poor old ship that had carried us so far.

It was not until August 1844 that the Commander-in-Chief knew any particulars of the wreck. The narrative was then forwarded to him by Sir George Napier (from the Cape), to whom Lord Fitzroy Somerset sent the following copy of the Duke's Minute, which had been written with his own hand on the narrative after perusing it.

VOL. XXV.-NO. 147, N.S.

22