62 THE SEA. 



chimney, with nothing for their legs and feet to act itpon." 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 ship which had floated off. At the time the ship 

 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 re- 

 covered her senses when taken on board our old friend the Victory, then lying with other 

 large ships near the Royal George. The captain of the latter was saved, but the poor 

 carpenter, who did his best to save the ship, 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 excava- 

 tion prepared for them in Kingstown churchyard, the burial-place belonging to the parish 

 of Portsea." Many bodies were washed ashore 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 re- 

 covered by the divers, and the timbers formed then, and since, a perfect godsend 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, 

 shells, starfish, and anemones, while from and around its ports and openings the fish, 

 large and small, swam and played darting, flashing, and sparkling in the clear green 

 water. 



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 



