'Steam boilers leak. Put fires out, lose seven hours—obliged to empty boilers—the Devil and all! At least the men here are devils incarnate—two of them entered the boilers and drove rivets with the thermometer 160 in there.
'Sir H. Hotham wrote me a kind note in answer to my request to allow
Hart to bring the ship home after me.
'June 20.—At sea hove to off the coast of Portugal in the steam packet. Sailed from Gibraltar (the 2nd time having put back once in consequence of the coals being bad Welsh). On the 15th called at Cadiz. On the 16th went on shore, Consul B—y pompous, &c. Daughters, music, painting, &c. William the Conqueror, &c. &c. Last night the Jew groaned heavily in his sleep, woke him—he was dreaming of being robbed of his money.
'June 23.—Put into Vigo Bay for coals and left it in the evening of the 24th. Beautiful Bay, fresh day; St. John's market a beautiful sight, if fine women constituted that. The steamboat all day crowded with strangers. Heard that Don Pedros had left Brazil and been received in London.
'June 30.—Arrived in sight of Falmouth and anchored in 30 fm. having burnt the guts and bulwarks to bring her thus far. Went to town the next day by mail.'
CHAPTER VII
COURT DUTIES AND POLITICS. 1831-1847
On the voyage home from the Mediterranean in the steamship Meteor, which is described in the journal I have quoted in the last chapter, my father received the sad news of the death of Sir Joseph Sydney Yorke, an event to which he makes no allusion in the journal. Admiral Sir Henry Hotham, who had just been appointed to the command of the Mediterranean station, and had sailed in the St. Vincent from Portsmouth, was the bearer of a last letter written by Sir Joseph to his son on the 3rd of April 1831. The St. Vincent met the Meteor at sea, and Sir Henry, in handing the letter to Captain Yorke, had also to announce Sir Joseph's death, which occurred only two days after he had finished the letter. This letter was found among my father's papers, and I set it out at length; it is quite typical of others which display the affection which existed between father and son, and it shows very convincingly the success which attended Captain Yorke's career in the Mediterranean. The circumstances of the accident in which Sir Joseph lost his life appear, so far as they can be known, in a note to Sir Joseph's letter written by my brother John, the late Earl of Hardwicke. [Footnote: He died from influenza, March 1909.] From this it will be seen that Sir Joseph was returning from a visit to the St. Vincent, which he had made in order to hand his letter to Sir Henry Hotham, when he met his death. It appears also from the annotation by my father that Sir Henry sailed without hearing of the accident, and only learned of Sir Joseph's death by subsequently reading a notice of it in Galignani's Messenger.
* * * * *