400 Her Majesty's Ship "Sultan" 



The gale of wind thus heralded was not long in putting in 

 its appearance, and at about noon on the I4th, just seven days 

 after she struck, the "Sultan" was forced off the rock by a 

 heavy north-easterly gale with high sea and sank, her upper 

 works, however, still showing above water. The other ships 

 now returned into harbour, and partly owing to the continued 

 bad weather, partly also owing to the altered position of the 

 ship, further efforts to save or raise her appear to have been 

 discontinued. On the i8th Lord George Hamilton stated that 

 the "Sultan" had grounded on a patch of rock not marked on 

 the chart, but he could not say whether this was due to defective 

 survey or to recent volcanic action. In The Times of the 2Oth 

 the Portsmouth correspondent states that experts consider the 

 prospect of raising her hopeless, especially remembering the 

 difficulties which attended the raising of the "Eurydice," a 

 very much smaller ship. 



Last night Lord George Hamilton stated that the Com- 

 mander-in-Chief reported discouragingly of the prospect of 

 raising the ship, and that they had asked a salvage company 

 to examine the wreck and report. He added that the "Sultan " 

 has 460 tons of iron and cement ballast, equal to one foot of 

 draught. This was put in to enable her to carry an upper 

 battery deck. 



From the information thus summarized, we may draw the 

 following conclusions : On the morning of the 7th of March the 

 "Sultan" ran upon a rock, of the existence of which there was 

 no suspicion. She was probably steaming at an easy rate, 

 but even if she were going at the slowest speed at which her 

 engines would move, a mass of close on 10,000 tons is not 

 brought to rest in a couple of seconds without much destructive 

 work being done on her hull. Accordingly, we may assume 

 that, from close to the stem and as far as the fore-rigging the 

 bottom of the ship has been ripped open. From the statement 

 made last night about the 460 tons of iron and cement ballast 

 added to balance an extra battery deck, it is probable that this 

 cement and iron filled up a large portion of the double bottom 

 of the ship, thus converting her from a ship with two iron 

 bottoms into one with a single bottom made of a composite 



