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Updated: June 25, 2025
Particularly was this the case in Bristol Channel, where a large number of ironclads were stationed, and which was to have been the destination of the Llangaron if the Syndicate's vessels had delayed their coming long enough to allow her to get around there.
Each of the disabled ironclads was now in tow of a sister vessel, or of tugs, except the Llangaron. This great ship had been disabled so early in the contest, and her broadside had presented such a vast surface to the north-west wind, that she had drifted much farther to the south than any other vessel.
The dynamite bombs flew over the tops of the crabs, whose rapid motions and slightly exposed surfaces gave little chance for accurate aim, and in a short time they were too close to the Llangaron for this class of gun to be used upon them.
As the crabs came nearer, the Llangaron lowered the great steel cylinder which hung across her stern, until it lay almost entirely under water, and abaft of her rudder and propeller-blades. She now moved slowly through the water, and her men greeted the advancing crabs with yells of defiance, and a shower of shot from machine guns.
Q signalled to R, and R back again, and instantly the two crabs, each still grasping a chain of the cylinder, began to sink. On board the Llangaron an order was shouted to let out the cylinder chains; but as these chains had only been made long enough to allow the top of the cylinder to hang at or a little below the surface of the water, a foot or two of length was all that could be gained.
The Llangaron was a recently built ironclad of the same size and class as the Adamant; and to her had been attached the new stern-defence. This was an immense steel cylinder, entirely closed, and rounded at the ends. It was about ten feet in diameter, and strongly braced inside. It was suspended by chains from two davits which projected over the stern of the vessel.
If a torpedo, shot from a torpedo-boat, and speeding swiftly by its own powers beneath the waves, should strike the submerged hull of a crab, there would be one crab the less in the English Channel. As has been said, the Llangaron came rushing on, distancing everything, even the torpedo-boats.
But only for a moment. The nippers of Crab R still firmly held the chain, and the tremendous leverage exerted by the falling of one end of the cylinder wrenched it from the rigidly held end of its chain, and, in a flash, the enormous stern-guard of the Llangaron sunk, end foremost, to the bottom of the channel.
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