Rear-Admiral Foley, admiral-superintendent of Portsmouth Dockyard, kindly invited me to be his guest to take part in the salvage operations arranged for the raising of the Eurydice. That occasion was, I think, the first upon which the newly invented wire hawsers were actually tested in practical work. When they were introduced it was thought that they would not be flexible enough for their purpose. They were, however, used with great success in raising the Eurydice. The hawsers were passed under the hull of the sunken ship and secured to lighters moored on either side of her. As the tide went down, the hawsers were hove taut, and water was let into the lighters so that they should be brought as low in the water as possible. The water was then pumped out of the lighters, thus putting the utmost strain upon the hawsers. Then, as the rising of the tide exerted a powerful lift upon lighters and hawsers, the lighters were towed towards the shore, in order to drag the wreck upon the beach. As soon as she grounded, the hawsers were fleeted and the whole process gone through again until at low tide she was nearly high and dry.
My old ship, the Thunderer, which took a hawser to her after capstan to tow the Eurydice, had the solid iron spindle of the capstan pulled right out of her, as a long nail is bent and dragged out of a piece of timber. I well remember the intense excitement when the wreck first shifted from her bed. Eventually we hauled her up the beach. I was just then taking a bearing for Admiral Foley, and could not have given a better holloa if I had viewed a fox.
Before the water was pumped out of her, and as she lay on her side on the beach, I climbed in at a porthole, and sat there waiting till I could enter. As the water fell, I saw emerge the sentry's clock on the main-deck. The hands had stopped at 4.5. The bodies lay in heaps, tangled amid ropes; some had lost a head and some a limb. Black mud had filtered in everywhere, even (as Sir Edward Seymour remarks) into the closed drawers of the chests in the cabins.
When, as a cadet, I was learning to heave the lead from the chains of the Eurydice, which, as I have already related, was then moored off Haslar Creek in Portsmouth Harbour, I little thought I should one day help to raise her from the bottom of the sea.
Dr. Boyd Carpenter (late Bishop of Ripon), in his charming volume of recollections, Some Pages of my Life, narrates a remarkable story concerning the Eurydice, as it was told to him. Sir John MacNeill was the Bishop's cousin and, like other members of his family, had the gift of second sight.
"Sir John MacNeill," writes the Bishop, "was looking out of the window in Sir John Cowell's room at Windsor, when suddenly he exclaimed: 'Good Heavens! Why don't they close the portholes and reef the topsails!' Sir John Cowell looked up and asked him what he meant. He said, in reply, that he hardly knew; but that he had seen a ship coming up Channel in full sail, with open portholes, while a heavy squall was descending upon her. At the very time this conversation was taking place the fatal storm fell upon the Eurydice, and she foundered as she was coming in sight of home."
In 1880, while I was still in command of the Osborne, I lost my seat at Waterford. In the following year, desiring to hold another independent command before my promotion to captain, I applied to go to sea again, and was appointed to command H.M.S. Condor.