[Illustration: THE WEST INDIAMAN “THETIS” (CAPTAIN BURTON).
This shows an Early Nineteenth Century first-class ship employed in the West Indian trade.]
She was rolling very badly, and life-lines were run along the deck for the whole watch of soldiers to hang on by. For the women and children below, matters were alarming and unpleasant in those cooped-up quarters. So heavily did the _Kent_ roll that at every lurch her main chains were well below the water. Things were bad enough on deck, but below the furniture and other articles had broken away from their cleats and were being violently dashed about both in the cabins and the cuddy. In order to see whether everything was all right below in the hold, one of the ship’s officers went down with a couple of seamen, in case anything might have broken adrift and be endangering the hull. He took with him a patent safety lantern, but as the lamp was burning dimly he handed it up to the orlop deck to be trimmed. He then discovered that one of the spirit casks had got adrift, and sent the two men to get some wood to wedge it up. Soon afterwards the ship gave a heavy lurch, so that the officer most unfortunately dropped the lantern. In his eagerness to recover it he let go his hold of the cask, and there was a smash. Instantly the spirits reached the lamp and the whole of the afterhold was in a blaze.
Here was a terrible position: a raging storm outside and a raging fire within. Clouds of smoke came up the hatchway and were blown violently to leeward as the wind fanned the flames. The captain of the ship gave his orders, and both the seamen and the troops worked their very hardest with buckets, pumps, wet sails, hammocks—anything in fact that could be employed to put the fire out. But far from decreasing the conflagration was spreading, and smoke came up in volumes from all four hatchways. The captain now ordered the lower decks to be scuttled, the combings of the hatches to be cut, and the ports to be opened, so that all the sea possible might have a free entry. Meanwhile some of the sick soldiers, a woman and several children, unable to gain the upper deck, had perished.
As some of the passengers went below they met one of the mates staggering up the hatchway, exhausted and almost senseless. He reported that he had just stumbled over some dead bodies, who must have perished in the suffocating smoke. With difficulty the lower ports could be opened owing to the atmosphere, but when the passengers at last succeeded the sea came pouring in, carrying chests and bulkheads before it. Happily the tons of water which made their way into the hold checked the fury of the flames and decreased the possibility of explosion, which had been the greatest fear. But now the ship was fairly water-logged, and death from explosion was apparently to give way to death by drowning. Efforts were therefore made to close the ports again, and batten down the hatches and stifle the fire. The occasion was terrifying in the extreme, for it was merely a question as to how long the grave position could be tolerated. Six or seven hundred human beings in the agony of suspense—often more trying than physical pain itself—were on the upper deck. Some had been suffering the pangs of seasickness for days, many had rushed up from below with no time to slip on warm clothes, others were seeking out husbands, wives or children. Some were standing resigned to their fate, while others, as is always the case on such occasions, were indulging in despair and frenzy. Some were saying their prayers, while some of the toughest of the soldiers and seamen took up their positions immediately over the magazine in the hope that when the explosion came at any moment they might be blown into eternity without delay. Every man, woman and child was, to use a fitting expression, “bump up against the inevitable,” and everyone acted according to his or her character in this time of crisis.