The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-17 00:00:00

A Collision wi'

(From the Record).
A correspondent who was a passenger in an Australian
ship which narrowly escaped destruction by an iceberg, has
furnished us with a graphic narrative of the alarming
occurrence 2 .

" I was very recently a passenger from Australia to
Liverpool en board one of the noblest ships, the Royal
Standard, belonging to the celebrated White Star Line of
Packets. We wet° upwards of 300 statute adults on board,
exclusive of the captain, officers, stewards, and 71 crew,
and had as a cargo three thousand bales of wool, and
120,000 worth of gold. The first part of our voyage
was attended with no particular incident ; of course,
there was the usual routine of sea-sickness, the formation
of messes,' and the unpacking and the metamorphoses
occasioned by changes of dress that are now familiar to all
old stagers. After the genial intertropical climate of the
Antipodes we rapidly approached 'the Horn,' when the
weather became intensely cold. Morning, noon, and night
groups of passengers huddled or crept round the huge funnel
of our ship, for we wore an auxiliary screw, to gather a
little extra warmth. On Sunday, April 3, lat. 56 S, long.
110 W, we saw the first iceberg, and a beautiful sight it was.
It was a majestic mountain of ice floating along like a mass
of burnished silver, about 360 feet high, as ascertained by
the sextant, and about two miles in length at the base. As
the sun shone full upon it, it presented a splendid appear-
ance, and as our relative positions altered it assumed a
variety of shapes most fantastic, and lighthouses, cathedrals,
churches, &c., were easily conjured up without much stretch
of imagination. As we stood, one and all gazing at this
Antartic wonder of the deep, some looking at it through
their glasses, some sketching it in their note-books, and all
associating with it ideas of novelty and beauty, no one
dreamt that the next day would be one of such awful peril
that the total destruction of our ship and all on board
appeared inevitable.
"Monday, April 4th, opened with thick, hazy weather,
and a good breeze, before which we were going, without
steam, ten knots an hour, apprehensive of no danger.
Suddenly we ran into a dense fog, and almost immediately
one of the double look-out gave the alarm, ' Broken water
ahead I' and almost immediately after. Ice on the star-
board bow 1 At that moment I was writing the news-
paper I conducted on board, in the engineer's mess-room ;
but hearing the noise, and the ominous cry, ' Helm hard
a starboard 1' I rushed on deck, and looking over the bul-
warks saw, to my horror, an immense mountain of ice,
towering far above our maintop-gallant mast, which was
200 feet about the water-line, and so close to us that any
one could have jumped on to it. All hands were imme-
diately summoned on deck, and everything done to prevent
what new appeared inevitable—a collision between our ship
and the iceberg. The yards were trimmed, the sails
adjusted, and everything done to prevent this fearful
catastrophe—but in vain. The monster mountain bi ice
drew nearer and nearer to us, and we drifted nearer and
nearer to it. At length the inevitable moment came;
one heavy roll of the skip, and the yards of the foremast
grated right into the solid mass of ice, tearing out and
hurling down upon the deck immense blocks of ice, some
of them of enormous size. At the same moment the main
and mix n topmast snapped at the cap with tremendous
noise, and, being made of iron, hung over with all their
gear amidst the rigging, to the great danger of every one
on deck. While this was going on the men at the wheel
stood faithful to their duty, although one of them had his
overcoat rent in two by a lump of ice that fell in front of
him, yet it did not touch him. The scene on deck was now
indescribable. Loudly were the orders passed fore and aft
to the hands, and as heartily obeyed, to adjust the yards and
trim the ship so as to help her to forge ahead of the iceberg,
many of the passengers rendering good service in this emer-
gency. Under the forecastle dock were gathered groups
of men, pale, silent, awestruck. Two strong stalwart men
had hold of my hands, and with big beads of teats rolling
down their cheeks cried for mercy. Between decks women
and children were loud in their passionate cries, and iu the
intermediate was an elderly gentleman, a widower, with 5
children, in the agony of woe, expecting his and their im-
mediate destruction. Still the worst was not come; again
the ship's yards crunched into the iceberg; where I stood I
looked up and saw that this mountain of ice actually over-
hung the ship, standing then 600 feet out of the water. There
were two large fissures running from the top a considerable
way down,and as the ship rolled oven feared the yards would
go into one of these fissures. Had they done so they would
have brought down tons of ice that would have sent us to
the bottom in a moment. We were spared that doom, but the
next instant the foretop gallant mast, jibboom, foretopsail
yard, studding-sail boom, and all their gear went at the
next crunch, tearing and splitting the sails to ribbons. At
the same time over the forecastle deck came rolling vast
torrents of water, flooding the decks and creating a fresh
source of danger. The Royal Standard was now all but a
helpless log, crippled and dismantled, she presented the most
pitiable appearance, and with her masts, yards, chains, and
ropes all hanging over and dangling about in most dangerous
confusion, the marvel is that no one was seriously injured
if not killed.
" Still the worst was not come, and but for the amazing
strength of her iron hull, all on board must have gone down
to the bottom, leaving no record of their fate behind them.
Bodily the ship drifted up against the berg, her whole side
coming violently into contact with it, and—l quote from
the ship's log, lest my account should be regarded as the
natural exaggeration of a landsman's fears—' smashed the
starboard lifeboat, carried away the bumpkin, stove in all
the starboard bulwarks, stove in the starboard quarter in
several places ; also the captain's cabin, and sent the chro-
nometers flying about, lilting the poop deck beams one
foot, thus damaging all the cabins ; and with another heavy
crash split our upper plate amidships, and did other sundry
damages. At this moment total destruction seemed in-
evitable; but as the ship still slowly forged a head under
main and foresails, hope still remained. At last the end of
the berg came in view, and we forged clear. The berg ap-
peared to be enterely enveloped in a dense fog, and about 600
feet high. 'We passed along about half a mile of it, and
from the time of seeing it to clearing it it was about half
an hour.'
"So far the ship's log. ' Half an hour ;' yet what a half
hour 1 Who can tell the agony, the suspense, the wild and
all but frantic emotions that were crowded into that 30
minutes ? Beyond the noise of our ship's wreck knocking
about, and the orders given to the men, all was silence
after the first wild cry of terror and dismay.
Then shrieked the timid, and stood still the brave.'

" Pale and trembling men gazed, first at the iceberg ,then
at the ship, presenting a picture most desolate, and then at
each other ; many shook hands, and bade each other good
bye; and all stood, expecting a certain watery grave. For
myself, I was too stunned and startled to feel excited ; 1
seemed incapable of any feeling but that of dumb amaze-
ment. Not a tear came to my relief, not a word escaped my
lips. Wife and children I felt I should never see any more
—and so, holding a fellow passenger's hand, I calmly
awaited the awful moment, the summons to which had come
so unexpectedly, and under such fearful circumstances.
Meanwhile the captain was shouting to the boatswain—
'Da you see the ens of the berg ?' again and again, for all
our safety lay in our speedily gaining open sea. At length
after many times, ' Not yet, Sir,' ho said, Yes, Sir, close
by ;' and in another minute we had passed our enemy and
were in the open sea once more.
" Three loud cheers passed fore and aft, and ogain we
shook each other by the hand, and thanked God for our
deliverance. The saloon passengers immediately held a
special religious service, and so did the intermediate and
steerage, and these services were continued daily till our
arrival in Liverpool. Never, often as I had heard it, did
the language of the Prayer -book appear so grandly and
solemnly impressive as night after night we met in the
saloon, passengers and such of the crew as were off duty ;
and then, all distinctions merged, reverently bending
before Him who in His eternal tenderness had saved us in
the hour of sorest peril, we with one heart said, " We
. . . . humbly present ourselves again before Thy Divine
Msjesty to effer a sacrifice of praise and thanksgividg, for
that Thou heardest us when we called in our trouble, and
didst not cast out our prayer, which we made before Thee
in our deep distress; even when we gave up all for lost—
our ship, our goods, our lives, then Thou didst mercifully
look upon us, and wonderfully cornm :rid a deliverance.
For a hundred nights regularly did we meet for wor-
ship, in addition to our services every Sunday, and the
gambling and drinking usages were completely suspended.
After our danger was past, then the overpowering rush of
feeling came to my relief, nor to me alone ; there were
many others—and this is one of the curious psychological
facts connected with such strong, sudden excitement—who
when the danger was all over, sat and wept and sobbed like
children. Happily no life was lost. The ship was a perfect
wreck, her beauty and symmetry destroyed, her capacity for
a speedy passage across the ocean taken away, and all the
high expectations of the captain and passengers of a crack
passage dashed to the ground ; but sine(, skin for skin, yea,
all that a man hath, will he give for his life,' these losses
and disappointments sink into insignificance when compared
with our merciful deliverance."
Our cerrespondent gives, in- conclusion, some verses
written by a passenger, embodying in poetic form the facts
of the appalling collision, and pointing the moral of the
scone, These lines were copied out eagerly by the Ger-
man, Swiss, and French passengers, and ero this have
found their way through vat ions parts of the Continent.
As, however, they would scarcely interest general readers,
we omit this portion of our correspondent's communication,

HORSEWHIPPING A GOVERNMENT CLERK.—A
few days ago a somewhat extraordinary case oc-
curred in the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich. It appears that
while the clerks in the Royal Gun Factories were at their
usual avocations one of the offices was entered by a well-
known officer of Royal Artillery, accompanied by a friend
who had a good stout horsewhip. The gallant captain de-
mandtd an immediate apology from ono of the clerks for
alleged impertinent conduct towards his daughter, who, it
appears, was escorted home from a party by the accused
clerk on the previous night. The requited apology was
refused, whereupon the indignant son of Mars applied the
horsewhip in a vigorous manner upon the back of the
offender in the presence of his brother clerks and other
persons N% ho were attracted to the spot, but did not inter-
tere with this summary infliction of punishment.