Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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THE BERMUDA FLOATING DOCK.

On the afternoon of the 23rd of June, 1869, the Bermuda was towed to the Nore by four ordinary Thames tugs, accompanied by H.M.SS. Terrible, Medusa, Buzzard, and Wildfire. On arriving at the Nore off the lightship she found the Northumberland waiting for her. The tugs cast off, and a hawser was passed to the Northumberland, which took her in tow as far as Knob Channel, the Terrible bringing up astern. The Agincourt was now picked up, and passing a hawser on board the Northumberland, took the lead in the maritime tandem. A hawser was now passed to the Terrible from the stern of the Bermuda, so that by towing that vessel she might be kept from swaying from side to side. The Medusa steamed on the quarter of the Northumberland, and the Buzzard acted as a kind of floating outrider to clear the way. The North Foreland was passed the same evening, at a speed of four knots an hour. Everything went well until the 25th, when she lost sight of land off the Start Point late in the afternoon of that day. On the 28th she was half-way across the Bay of Biscay, when, encountering a slight sea and a freshening wind, she showed her first tendency to roll, an accomplishment in which she was afterwards beaten by all her companions, although the prognostications about her talents in this direction had been of the most lugubrious description. It must be understood that the bottom of her hold, so to speak, was only some ten feet under the surface of the water, and that her hollow sides towered some sixty feet above it. On the top of each gunwale were wooden houses for the officers, with gardens in front and behind, in which mignonette, sweet peas, and other English garden flowers, grew and flourished, until they encountered the parching heat of the tropics. The crew was quartered in the sides of the vessel; and the top of the gunwales, or quarter-decks, as they might be called, communicated with the lower decks by means of a ladder fifty-three feet long.