urting steam that came to my ears.

"There are two reasons why I know that first salvo hit us _after_ the
torpedo was launched, though there could not have been more than a
fraction of a second between one and the other. The first is that one of
the shells carried away the lip of the tube before penetrating the deck
and cutting a steam-pipe. If the mouldie had been in the tube it could
not have missed being exploded; or, if by a miracle that had not
happened, the tube was so much buckled that it could not have been
operated. The second reason was that fragments from that shell, besides
wounding me in the leg, even killed or blew overboard the rest of the
crew, so that there would have been no one to get a mouldie away even if
the tubes had been in working order. I remember distinctly seeing the
torpedo hit the water, but I have no recollection of seeing it steady to
depth and begin to run. As that is the main thing you always watch for,
I can only account for the fact I did not see it by supposing that first
hit came before the torpedo began to run.

"The shock of the explosion did not knock me off my seat, and a wound
from a jagged piece of shell casing, though it was serious enough to put
me out of commission for five months, felt only like a sharp prick on my
leg. My pal, Able Seaman French, collapsed in a limp heap under the
tubes, and though I saw no blood or signs of a wound, and though I never
saw a man killed before, I knew he was done for. I don't know to this
day where he was hit. The man whose station was at the breech-blocks I
never saw again, living or dead, so I think he must have caught the
unbroken force of the explosion and been blown back right over the
starboard side.

"This shell, in bursting the main steam-pipe, probably had the most to
do with bringing us to stop, though another (I think of the same salvo)
exploded in Number Three boiler-room and started a big fire, probably
from the oil. The clouds of black smoke and steam rising 'midships made
it impossible to see what was going on there. I saw some of the crew of
the 'midships gun struggling in the water, and took it that they must
have been blown there.

"That gun was out of action, anyway, and, because I did not hear it
firing, I assumed that the foremost one had also gone wrong. The after
gun was firing for all it was worth, though, and continued to do so
right up to the end.

"That one salvo pretty well finished the _Mary Rose_ as a fig