s windows, to
admit light, and supplied with air by means of pipes, communicating with
an air-pump above. By these means they could remain under water more
than an hour at a time. I do not think you are old enough to understand
the nature of Colonel Pasley's operations. Large hollow vessels, called
cylinders, were filled with gunpowder, and attached by the divers to the
wreck, these were connected by conducting wires with a battery on board
a lighter above, at a sufficient distance to be out of reach of danger
when the explosion took place. Colonel Pasley then gave the word to fire
the end of the rod; instantly a report was heard, and those who
witnessed the explosions, say that the effect was very beautiful. On
one occasion, the water rose in a splendid column above fifty feet high,
the spray sparkling like diamonds in the sun; then the large fragments
of the wreck came floating to the surface; soon after the mud from the
bottom, blackening the circle of water, and spreading to a great
distance around; and with it rose to the surface great numbers of fish,
who, poor things, had found a hiding-place in the wreck, but were
dislodged and killed by the terrible gunpowder.

[Illustration: LOSS OF THE MELVILLE CASTLE.]

LOSS OF THE MELVILLE CASTLE.

Many and great are the dangers to which those who lead a seafaring life
are exposed. The lightning's flash may strike a ship when far away from
port, upon the trackless deep, or the sudden bursting of a particular
kind of cloud, called a waterspout, may overwhelm her, and none be left
to tell her fate. But of all the perils to which a ship is liable, I
think that of her striking on a sand-bank, or on sunken rocks is the
greatest. There must be men and women now living on the Kentish coast,
in whose memory the disastrous wreck of the Melville Castle, with all
its attendant horrors, is yet fresh. It is a sorrowful tale, doubly so,
inasmuch as acts of imprudence, and still worse, of obstinacy, may be
said to have occasioned the loss of four hundred and fifty lives.

In the first place, the Melville Castle, or as I suppose we should call
her the Vryheid, was in a very decayed state; she had been long in the
East India Company's service, and was by them sold to some Dutch
merchants, who had her upper works tolerably repaired, new sheathed and
coppered her, and resold her to the Dutch government, who were then in
want of a vessel to carry out troops and stores to Batavia.