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Amongst the different craft that caught my eye old hulks, placidly resting their weary timbers on the muddy bosom of the Medway, dismantled, dismasted, and having pent-houses like the roofs of barns over their upper decks in lieu of awnings; armour-plated cruisers, in the First Class Steam Reserve, ready to be commissioned at a moment's notice; and ships in various degrees of construction, on the building slips and in dry dock was a vessel which seemed to be undergoing the operation of "padding her hull," if the phrase be admissible as explaining what I noticed about her, the planking, from which the copper sheathing had been previously stripped, being doubled, apparently, and protected in weak places by additional beams and braces being fixed to the sides.
The mere memory of hearing when it is lost is still enough for the ends of genius; for the poet and the composer touch the blind most deeply, perhaps, when other senses do not count at all; but a painter who loses his sight is as helpless in the world of art as a dismasted ship in the middle of the ocean.
Only four years ago, the British barque Acdazeer, bound from Bombay to China, with a cargo consisting of thirteen hundred chests of opium, was dismasted in a gale in the China Sea, and bore up for the port of Sourabaya, which she entered in distress, for the purpose of repairs, and for stores to enable her to prosecute her voyage.
In this position the Orion silenced her immediate opponent, the Peuple Souverain, which, being in an hour and a half totally dismasted, cut her cables and dropped out of the line; the contest being then continued with the sixth in the French order, the Franklin, next ahead of the flag-ship, Orient.
And this conclusion was abundantly verified on the following day, for about mid-morning a floating object was sighted on the starboard bow which, as the Nonsuch drew nearer, proved to be the hull of a small ship, dismasted, floating low in the water, and rolling horribly in the trough of the sea.
"I have to thank you, then, for my wife," said an officer, coming up and offering his hand. Another came up, and told me that I had also released his. We then entered into a conversation, in which I stated the occasion of my having been wrecked, and all the particulars; also, that I had seen the brig in the morning dismasted, but that she had weathered the point, and was safe.
The merchant ships which watched this audacious defiance of wind and wave were having all they could do to avoid being swept or dismasted. Side by side wallowed Wasp and Frolic, sixty yards between them, while the cannon rolled their muzzles under water and the gunners were blinded with spray.
The government occasionally sells the smaller vessels of war to merchants, in order to increase the shipping, and to secure that those armed vessels which are afloat, may be in the finest possible condition. A corvette, completely equipped, was lately sold to his majesty the autocrat of the Russias; but was dismasted in a day or two after her departure from Charleston.
Now, after the ship had been dismasted, all those seven years gone, the crew had been able to save many of her spars, these having remained attached to her, through their inability to cut away all of the gear; and though this had put them in sore peril at the time, of being sent to the bottom with a hole in their side, yet now had they every reason to be thankful; for, by this accident, we had now a foreyard, a topsail-yard, a main t'gallant-yard, and the fore-topmast.
The Young America stood up towards the wreck, intending to pass under her stern as near as it was prudent to lay, the head of the dismasted ship being to the north-west. "Boatswain, pipe all hands to muster," said the captain, prompted by Mr. Lowington, as the ship approached the wreck. "All hands on deck, ahoy!" shouted the boatswain, piping the call.
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