st every case of shipwreck where there is a chance of plunder,
there are wretches so destitute of the common feelings of humanity as
to hover round the scene of horror, in hopes, by stripping the bodies
of the dead, and seizing whatever they can lay their hands on, to
benefit themselves.

It was the fore magazine which took fire; had it been the after one,
much more damage must have ensued. The moment the explosion was heard,
Sir Richard King arose from dinner, and went in his boat on board the
hulk, where the sight he beheld was dreadful; the deck covered with
blood, mangled limbs and entrails blackened with gunpowder, the shreds
of the Amphion's pendant and rigging hanging about her, and pieces of
her shattered timbers strewed all around. Some people at dinner in the
Yarmouth, though at a very small distance, declared that the report
they heard did not appear to be louder than the firing of a cannon
from the Cambridge, which they imagined it to be, and had never risen
from dinner, till the confusion upon deck led them to think that some
accident had happened.

At low water, the next day, about a foot and a half of one of the
masts appeared above water; and for several days the dock-yard men
were employed in collecting the shattered masts and yards, and
dragging out what they could procure from the wreck. On the
twenty-ninth, part of the fore-chains was hauled, shattered and
splintered, also the head and cut-water.

On the 3d of October an attempt was made to raise the Amphion,
between the two frigates, the Castor and Iphigenia, which were
accordingly moored on each side of her; but nothing could be got up,
excepting a few pieces of the ship, one or two of her guns, some of
the men's chests, chairs, and part of the furniture of the cabin.
Some bodies floated out from between decks, and among the rest a
midshipman's.--These, and all that could be found, were towed round
by boats through Stone-house bridge up to the Royal Hospital stairs,
to be interred in the burying ground. The sight for many weeks was
truly dreadful, the change of tide, washing out the putrid bodies,
which were towed round by the boats when they would scarcely hold
together.

Bodies continued to be found so late as the 30th of November, when the
Amphion having been dragged round to another part of the dock-yard
jetty to be broken up, the body of a woman was washed out from between
decks. A sack was also dragged up, containing gunpowder, covered o