The Stoker’s Tale.

Cromwell Argus, Volume III, Issue 119, 20 February 1872, Page 7

The Stoker’s Tale.

— o — Sptxlator, under this heading, publishes a summary of what it c d's a “ wonderfully vivid and pathetic narrative of the Mtgcora stoker’s tale, as related l»y a very able correspondent of the Daily Navis." T)ie article concludes as follows ■ The stoker who tells the tale, and who lias a marvellous power of illustration, here adds a simile to paint more clearly the condition of the ship, which strikes us as one of the most graphic and frightfully vivid we ever met with : “I once knew a chap so bad in consumption that he said he was spitting himself bodily away as he walk d. Blessed if the Megfera warn’t, after a fashion, spitting herself away as she steamed. Tae suction of the pumps was like the poor fellow’s cough ; it fetched pieces of the rotten girders up the pumps, and so out into the sea. But the fragments of her pretty well choked the pumps at last, for the Old Man found them obstructed by a lot of old iron that had not gone up the spout.” The captain had no | sooner seen with his own eyes the state of I things thus described than he condemned tho ! ship, and told the crew after reading the i morning prayers (for it was Sunday), that ! the ship’s bottom was really dropping out, j that the ship might go down at any moment, | and that they must prepare to abandon her. i On the afternoon of the 19th June, Captain ! Thrupp, then at St. Paul’s (for which he had j run directly he discovered the leak), deter- | mined to try to run her over the bar and on j shore. “The boats could not have lived ! over the bar,” says the stoker, and besides j being many of them as old and crazy as the i ship, were not capable of holding more than I two-thirds of those on board. So the order | was given that all hands —except the stokers I and engineers necessary to manage the enl gines and keep “ a full head on”—should go I on deck, that, in case the ship should “ break I her back ” on the bar, as was expected, the I crew might have a chance for their lives. Wo must give the rest of the story in the very j words of the report : I “Half the crew were on the topgallant 1 fok’sle, half aft, every man ready for a spring lit she would break her back. Between the rollers and the sharks, I fear it would have gone hard with them. ‘ Where Was I?’ ‘Oh ! below ; for somebody had to keep the steam on. The stokers were forced to remain below, At least it warn’t altogether force, but i duty, sir, for we never thought to grumble, i although we never thought to see the deck i again. Orders were to get on a strong head of steam. The glands were leaking, and I thought every minute the steampine would i go. It was an anxious moment. We talked j down there about things sailors don’t often | talk about. The engineer contended that ' as we was down below on duty, and for tho : common good, we should be pretty sure of ! heaven if the burst-up should come. Then. I as we neared the bar, we shook hands and i parted, each man turning his face to the wall. She cleared the bar, and took tho ground beautiful. She went on the rocks as smooth , and easy as if she had been an empty eggshell. If she had been a sound, strong ship, her mast would have gone by the board with j the shock, but she was so rotten that there • | was no shook, and the rocks came up through , her as if her bottom had been of pie-crust.”