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Updated: May 13, 2025
Their sides as they lay would be choked with hulks and lighters. They would be unable to get their anchors up, set their canvas, or stir from their moorings. Daring as Drake was known to be, no one would expect him to go with so small a force into the enemy's stronghold, and there would be no preparations to meet him. He could count upon the tides.
Lighters were constructed for the purpose, and the colonists formed themselves into gangs, labouring in common, and transporting so many loads of sand to each levee, as the banks were called, though not raised as on the Mississippi, and distributing it bountifully over the surface. The spade was employed to mix the two earths together.
At the pier at "W" were several big lighters filled with wounded who were about to be towed out to Hospital ships. Spent the best part of an hour on the lighters. The cheeriness of the gallant lads is amazing superhuman! Went on to see Hunter-Weston at his Headquarters, a queer Headquarters it would seem to our brethren in France! Braithwaite, Street, Hunter-Weston and myself.
It is navigable by small boats, barks, and lighters; and, for the conveniency of loading and unloading them, there is a handsome quay by the new custom-house, at the Porto di Ripetta, provided with stairs of each side, and adorned with an elegant fountain, that yields abundance of excellent water.
Now that is an example of how things happen under an honest democratical impulse. I do not dwell specially on the earlier part of the story, though the earlier part of the story is astonishingly interesting. It recalls the days when Englishmen were potential lighters; that is, potential rebels.
Orders were given for every one to get ashore right away that evening; and the lighters, towed by a small tug, were soon carrying the passengers thither, bag and baggage, and somewhat disgruntled. A few of us, who believed that, in the last analysis, those orders were a bluff to get rid of people, remained that night unmolested in our bunks, to visit the "golden sands" in ample time of morning.
At each turn he had showed the warrant to be master of the lighters; he had handed over the gold that Throckmorton had given him.
The debarkation took place inside of the little island of Sacrificios, some three miles south of Vera Cruz. The vessels could not get anywhere near shore, so that everything had to be landed in lighters or surf-boats; General Scott had provided these before leaving the North. The breakers were sometimes high, so that the landing was tedious.
The first method, that of putting empty casks in the hold so as to give the hull a floating tendency, and then mooring lighters over it and pushing chains under it, we may dismiss at once, as being suitable only for small vessels; but the second method is worth considering, namely, that of fixing air-bags of india-rubber in the hold, attaching them to the sides, and then inflating them all at the same time by means of a powerful air-pump.
This entrance to the group was now much used by the whalers, who fell in with a great many fish in the offing, and who found it very convenient to tow them into this large basin, and cut them up. Thence the blubber was sent down in lighters to Whaling Bight, to be tryed out.
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