A DERELICT AT SEA.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 105, 21 April 1876, Page 4

A DERELICT AT SEA.

The Wanganui Chronicle publishes the following extract frdra the journal of Mr Charles O'Connor, a passenger to England by the Ocean Mail, which ship fell in with the abandoned hull of a large iron vessel, the same no doubt that has been several times met with by other vessels :. — ■ Saturday, April 10, (30 deg. 40 mm. fcj. 31 deg. 30 mm. W.) ! I was again deeply engrossed with the ever charming tale of Troy, when the exciting cry of a " Dismasted ship on the starboard bow" rang from stem to stern. Each seized his spy-glass and rushed on deck, and soon every eye was directed to the starboard horizon. Rolling about as the swell of the ocean passed beneath it, the hull of a| large ship was clearly seeD. The extreme end of the jibboom was still supported by the figure-head, but not a Stump or a mast arose from her desolate 4eck, A crowd of surmises arose in every micd. Where;. we're her sails ? If an emigrant ship, what of that vast crowd of human beings who had confided themselves to her care ? Might there not even yet be spme on board requiring aid — perhaps even j-eady to perish; We anxiously' awaited a nearer yiew. We longed to step on board and learn the whole, if not from the lips of ejome exhausted mariner, at least from the records of an abandoned ship. . : We are b tilt some six miles distant from the wreck, and our glasses could make out little else than the vast, black hull, rolling about on the sea. Near the prow a few black objects reared their crooked forms above the level of the surrounding wreck, and athwart the ' azure of the sky beyond. As we approached, however the prospect became more and more dismal. No waving handkerchief called for aid, or cheered a welcome to our furled sails. The more anxiously we .looked the, more carelessly she lay. : Helpless indeed Vehe was, yet she seemed no less proudly to bear the day of calamity than when with swelling sails she last left land, and dashed the foaming billowb from her prow. ]\ The total disappearance of the masts had. indeed indicated from afar a disaster of the most fearful kind ; but the extreme improbability of the bull- of a vessel surviving suoh a calamity bad almost excluded from the mind any thought of that fiery destruction from wbicb.it proved she bad lately emerged. It was at length all too plain. A shell of iron now, she had but lately been a §hip not less stately than our own. But a tempest of fire ■ had arisen — the encircling flames had dragged to the depths of the ocean the masts she so proudly had reared, and the red-hot beat had burned to the lowest depths the wealth that her hold contained. •■ : We had shortened eail to a considerable extent ere we were fully aware of the nature of the disaster; It was' idle to board a deck less ship. Within those yawning sides lay ashes, molten metal, twisted bars, and chains. A few iron skeletons that had sustained her decks, unable longer to endure the fiery flames, had dropped into the still more burning heat beneath. On the larboard side a yet more melancholy Sight remained. Gaps of broken bulwark told as no tongue could tell where the masts bad tottered from their thrones. Nor could the shrouds, . so long the masts': support when the ship was reeling in ao angry Bee, avail in that hour of ruin. The fallen monarchy were committed to the deep, and shrouds and chains hung idle in the fie a, or thundered anon on her hollow iron side. - Even her very name had melted iway. LIV told plainly enough of the port from which at the first she sailed the ssas, : But of that name by which she was known to the world, only a few broken letters remained. Her fate was' indeed plain. Not so that of her crew and officers. Over it hung a mist of obscurity not penetrable by any mariner's eye. Meantime our sailors had [silently unfurled the csnvas again. The earliest breathings of the south-east trades were rapidly -bearing us from tjie dismal spot as we watched her retreating to it he horizon again. But 16ng after night and distance had combined to conceal her from view, her clanking irons saomed still ringing in our ears and the "doleful tune seemed set to that 'world-old truth, that skies and waters calm afford no certainty or safety to man.