STEAMERS 143 



land. She strained ; her starboard engine was 

 disabled ; she began to leak ; and the engineer 

 came up to tell M'Dougall she was sinking. 

 But M'Dougall held his course, started the 

 pumps, and kept her under way for a week 

 with only the port engine going. The whole 

 passage from Pictou, counting the time she 

 was detained at Cowes repairing boilers, took 

 twenty-five days. M'Dougall, a sturdy Scots- 

 man, native of Oban, must have been sorely 

 tempted to ' put the kettle off the boil ' and run 

 her under sail. But either the port or star- 

 board engine, or both, worked her the whole 

 way over, and thus for ever established her 

 claim to priority in transatlantic navigation 

 under steam alone. 



In London she was sold for £10,000, just 

 twice what she had fetched at sheriff's sale in 

 Quebec some months before. She was at 

 once chartered, crew and all, by the Portuguese 

 government, who declined to buy her for con- 

 version into a man-of-war. In 1834, however, 

 she did become a man-of-war, this time under 

 the Spanish flag, though flying the broad 

 pennant of Commodore Henry, who was then 

 commanding the British Auxiliary Steam 

 Squadron against the Carlists in the north of 

 Spain. Two years later, on May 5, 1836, under 



