had been seen the day
before gracefully riding safely at their moorings, decked out in all
their pride and glory and lined up alongside the Strand, three and
four abreast from the Pepper Box to the Eden Gardens, one alone was
left, all the others having been violently torn adrift and swept clean
away to the four winds of heaven. Besides these were all the country
traders moored to the south of the Pepper Box known as Coolie Bazar,
extending as far as Tackta Ghat, which shared the same fate.

[Illustration: Remains of St. James's Theatre, Circular Road.]

[Illustration: Remains of Col. Turner's House, 2, Wood Street.]

They had all been driven helter-skelter in every direction, some as
far north as Cossipore, and one vessel, the _Earl of Clare_, was
landed high and dry on the present site of the assistants' bungalow of
the north mill of the Barnagore Jute Company. One of the P. & O. boats
lying at Garden Reach was deposited for some distance inland on the
opposite side of the river close to the Botanical Gardens, and the
_Govindpur_ was driven helplessly in a crippled state close to the
river bank just opposite to the Port Office on Strand Road, and was
lying for hours almost on her beam ends on the port side facing the
river. The crew had in desperation sought refuge in the rigging, from
which eventually and with extreme difficulty they were happily and
safely rescued. One of Apcar & Co.'s China steamers, the _Thunder_,
was driven well inside Colvin Ghat and on to the Strand at the bottom
of Hastings Street.

But the majority of ships seemed to have been flung together in a
confused tangled mass close to the Howrah Railway Ghat. Many were
sunk; others in the act of sinking; and the remainder so battered and
hammered about as to defy description, rendering it extremely
difficult to determine whether most of them would not become a
constructive loss. My eldest brother was in Calcutta at the time, in
command of a vessel called the _Vespasian_. He had been spending the
previous night at my chummery at Ballygunge, and when he went the next
morning to get on board his ship she was nowhere to be seen. At last
he traced her, jammed in amongst the ruck at Howrah, and that was the
last he ever saw of her, and he had subsequently to return home
overland minus his vessel. He afterwards joined the service of the
Pacific Steam Navigation Co., eventually becoming commodore of the
fleet, a position which he held for a great number