Sir Richard King had given a public dinner in honor of the coronation. Captain Charles Rowley, of the Unite frigate, calling in the morning, was engaged to stay, and excused himself from dining, as he had previously intended, on board the Amphion.
Captain Darby of the Bellerophon, was also to have dined with Captain Pellow, and had come round in his boat from Cawsand Bay; but having to transact some business concerning the ship with Sir Richard King, it detained him half an hour longer at Stone-house than he expected. He had just gone down to the beach and was stepping into the boat to proceed up to Hamoaze, when he heard the fatal explosion. Captain Swaffield was to have sailed the next day, so that the difference of twenty-four hours would have saved that much lamented and truly valuable officer. His brother Mr. J. Swaffield, of the Pay-Office, being asked to the same dinner, had set off with him from Stone-house, but before he had reached Dock a person came after him upon business, which obliged him to return, and thus saved him from sharing his brother’s untimely fate.
Many conjectures were formed concerning the cause of this catastrophe. Some conceived it to be owing to neglect, as the men were employed in drawing the guns, and contrary to rule, had not extinguished all the fires, though the dinners were over. This, however, the first lieutenant declared to be impossible, as they could not be drawing the guns, the key of the magazine hanging, to his certain knowledge, in his cabin at the time. Some of the men likewise declared that the guns were drawn in the Sound before they came up Hamoaze. It was also insinuated, that it was done intentionally, as several of the bodies were afterwards found without clothes, as if they had prepared to jump overboard before the ship could have time to blow up. As no mutiny had ever appeared in the ship, it seems unlikely that such a desperate plot should have been formed, without any one who survived having the least knowledge of it. It is, besides, a well known fact, that in almost every case of shipwreck where there is a chance of plunder, there are wretches so destitute of the common feelings of humanity as to hover round the scene of horror, in hopes, by stripping the bodies of the dead, and seizing whatever they can lay their hands on, to benefit themselves.
It was the fore magazine which took fire; had it been the after one, much more damage must have ensued. The moment the explosion was heard, Sir Richard King arose from dinner, and went in his boat on board the hulk, where the sight he beheld was dreadful; the deck covered with blood, mangled limbs and entrails blackened with gunpowder, the shreds of the Amphion’s pendant and rigging hanging about her, and pieces of her shattered timbers strewed all around. Some people at dinner in the Yarmouth, though at a very small distance, declared that the report they heard did not appear to be louder than the firing of a cannon from the Cambridge, which they imagined it to be, and had never risen from dinner, till the confusion upon deck led them to think that some accident had happened.
At low water, the next day, about a foot and a half of one of the masts appeared above water; and for several days the dock-yard men were employed in collecting the shattered masts and yards, and dragging out what they could procure from the wreck. On the twenty-ninth, part of the fore-chains was hauled, shattered and splintered, also the head and cut-water.
On the 3d of October an attempt was made to raise the Amphion, between the two frigates, the Castor and Iphigenia, which were accordingly moored on each side of her; but nothing could be got up, excepting a few pieces of the ship, one or two of her guns, some of the men’s chests, chairs, and part of the furniture of the cabin. Some bodies floated out from between decks, and among the rest a midshipman’s.—These, and all that could be found, were towed round by boats through Stone-house bridge up to the Royal Hospital stairs, to be interred in the burying ground. The sight for many weeks was truly dreadful, the change of tide, washing out the putrid bodies, which were towed round by the boats when they would scarcely hold together.
Bodies continued to be found so late as the 30th of November, when the Amphion having been dragged round to another part of the dock-yard jetty to be broken up, the body of a woman was washed out from between decks. A sack was also dragged up, containing gunpowder, covered over at the top with biscuit, and this in some measure, confirmed an idea which had before gained ground, that the gunner had been stealing powder to sell, and had concealed what he could get out by degrees in the above manner; and that, thinking himself safe on a day when every one was entertaining his friends he had carelessly been among the gunpowder without taking the necessary precautions. As he was said to have been seen at Dock very much in liquor in the morning, it seems probable that this might have been the cause of a calamity as sudden as it was dreadful.