The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-27 00:00:00

MAJOR-GENERAL PASLEY'S OPE-
RATIONS AT SPITHEAD.

In our former notices of the operations against the
wreck of the Edgar we described all that had been
done from the commencement in May last till the 23d
of August, on which day two guns were sent up. We
shall now continue our narrative to the end of Octo-
ber, when the diving, that had been carried on with
the utmost vigour, five military divers generally and
one naval diver often being employed, was discon-
tinued as a matter of necessity, though the sanguine
expectation of recovering the whole of the guns that
had been entertained at the beginning of the season
was not realised.

After the day before mentioned, the divers were
occupied for a fortnight in getting up timber from
the hull of the wreck, and the half-anchor creeper and
rake were frequently drawn across the shoal in which
it had been imbedded, whilst a couple of boats were
employed in sweeping all round whenever the
weather- permitted, in order to discover the re-
maining guns, if possible. This method not
being so satisfactory as at first, when the re-
mains of the wreck and guns were more abundant,
divers were afterwards sent down, one from each
of the launches, to walk about the bottom in va-
rious directions to endeavour to discover guns, whilst
the others were employed in getting up the timber of
the hull. By this method several guns were ob-
tained ; but this also failing, a new system of sweeping
by divers walking along the bottom occurred to Lieu-
tenant Barlow, which was tried for the first time on
the 19th of September, and continued till the end of
the season, whenever the weather permitted, the ar-
rangements being as follows :—Two guiding lines,
each sixty fathoms in length, and twenty fathoms
apart, were sunk parallel to each other, in the direc-
tion of the run of the tide, by means of pigs of ballast
at their ends, to each of which a buoy and buoy-line
were attached to mark its -position. Two divers,
Corporal Jones, of the Royal, and Private Sticklen, of
the East India Company's
.Sappers and Miners, de-
scended each to his respective guilding-line, from a
launch in which his air pump and attendants were
placed, and moved along the bottom from west to east
and back, or vice versa, according to the tide, parallel
to one another, each holding in his near hand the end
of a sweep rope and chain, which dragged along the
bottom between them, whilst in his far hand he
held the line that guided him in his course. At
the same time the two launches above were
warped along in the same direction as their respec-
spective divers, by whom their motions were regu-
lated according to preconcerted signals. This mode
of sweeping was much more sensitive than the
former, as any very small object, such as a stone or
piece of wood, that would have escaped observation
entirely in sweeping from boats, was immediately felt
by the divers, who made the signal for the launches
to stop, and then walked towards it until they met at
the spot. This progress was very fatiguing, as it took
them an hour to sweep from one end of their guiding-
lines to the other, though a distance only of sixty
fathoms, as before mentioned. The second day that
they carried on this process those two excellent
divers fell in with a leaden scupper of the Edgar, and
a sinker or large mooring-stone, of one of the old
wreck-buoys, though at a distance of ninety fathoms
to the northward of the position of the shoal in which
the hull was imbedded. On the 23d of September,
whilst sweepi.ig to the northward of the Success
frigate hulk, Corporal Jones slung another buoy-
stone ; and in the evening he was employed about
'.an hour aftei dark in slinging and eending up what