The waters rushing into the hold of the vessel
drowned the sick, and reached the knees of the convicts, who were
ascending the hatchway; and Major Ryan, and the surgeon-superintendent,
expected instant death. They succeeded in sending the long-boat on
shore, amidst the cheers of the prisoners. Assistance was afforded by
the _Louisa_ schooner; and a party dispatched in the cutter, obtained
help from Hobart Town: but of two hundred and twenty, one hundred and
thirty-three perished. The fate of the convicts who fell at the
hatchway, excited great commiseration and some complaint: the officers
disclaimed the order to fire--an act which could only be excused by the
danger to the whole company in a rush to the boat. A board of inquiry
acquitted all parties of blame.

One man, only, was found on the wreck; an aged prisoner, on his passage
to the colony under his third sentence of transportation: unable to face
the surf, he lashed himself to a ring attached to the hull, and there
closed his career of crime.

A disaster, not less appalling, occurred off King's Island, by the wreck
of the _Neva_, in May, 1835, at 4 o'clock in the morning: she struck
upon the rocks, swung on the reef, and admitted the sea. The pinnace was
lowered, and the prison being broken by the shock, the unfortunate women
rushed on the deck; they filled the boat, which was instantly swamped,
and all, except three seamen, perished. The long-boat was then carefully
laden; but being upset by the surf, all sunk, except the master and
chief officer: these having regained the ship, she parted; and the
women, aroused from their beds in the twilight of a wintry morning,
clung shivering to the fragments. Their cries of suffering and anguish
were soon hushed, and of two hundred and forty, a few moments before
slumbering in tranquillity, twenty-two only were borne on broken pieces
of the ship to land; of these, seven died from exhaustion, and the
remainder must have perished, but for the intrepid exertions of Mr.
Charles Friend, who caught sight of their signals when passing the
coast.

Two women disputed about the position of the vessel: exasperated by
contradiction, they were tearing each other by the hair, when a wave
swept them from the deck into eternity.

The wreck of the _Governor Phillip_, in 1848, was the last instance of
such disasters. The vessel struck on a sand bank off Cape Barren Island;
but, except four, all the prisoners were saved: six soldiers an