According to your request I have, as soon as my engagements would allow of my leaving London, paid a visit to the ‘Great Britain,’ and I now beg to report to you the state in which I found the vessel, and my opinion of the best means to be taken for recovering the largest possible amount of the property invested in her. If I state these opinions concisely, and without any qualifications, you will not suppose that I have the presumption to think them infallible, but merely that I am compelled, by the shortness of the time left me to write to you, to avoid all circumlocution, and to give you as simply and briefly as possible the opinions I have formed—at the same time I am bound to say that I have not formed them hastily, and that my convictions upon the several points upon which I may express my feelings are very strong.
First, as regards the present state of the vessel, I was agreeably disappointed, after the reports that had reached me, to find her as a whole, and, independently of the mere local damages of which I will speak presently, perfectly sound, and as strong and as perfect in form as on the day she was launched.
In receiving this statement you must bear in mind the great difference between an iron vessel and a timber-built ship. In the former, parts may be considerably damaged or even destroyed, and the remainder may not only be untouched, but may be left unstrained and uninjured. In a timber ship this can hardly be the case; if any considerable portion of a ship’s bottom is stove in, the timbers or ribs completely across the ship and the planking longitudinally, cannot fail to be strained to a very considerable distance in both directions. You must therefore remove from your minds all impressions derived from your experience of damages sustained by timber-built ships in order to understand my statement, which is strictly correct:—that, except the parts actually damaged, the extent of which is comparatively small, the ship is perfectly sound, and as good as at the hour when she struck. This soundness and freedom from any damage extends from about the 5 feet water line to the top (with the exception of the injury sustained by the knocking away of the rudder post and a blow under the stern); nearly the whole of the vessel is therefore sound: the principal injury is in her bottom under the boilers and engines. The vessel has evidently been thumping upon the rocks, and almost entirely upon this part of the bottom from the first few days after she grounded; and at present in all probability her whole weight is resting upon this part; yet notwithstanding this she is perfectly straight, and has not broken nor even sprung an inch in the whole length. The boilers have been forced up about 15 inches, and one of the condensers has been lifted about 8 inches, breaking the air-pump. At present this is nearly the extent of the damage done; all of which could easily be repaired if the vessel were in dock.
I will now state my opinion of the best means of recovering the largest possible amount of the property which has been invested in her. In this view I can only imagine two alternatives—the one to break her up on the spot and make the most of the materials; the other to get her afloat and into port, and restore her into good condition, or sell her to those who would so restore her.
The first alternative may I think be discarded at once; the plates and ribs of an iron vessel are difficult enough to convert into useful materials for any other purposes, even in the midst of workshops and with tools and appliances at hand. In such a place as Dundrum Bay I do not believe the materials would pay the expense of cutting up; the masts, spars, chains, &c., in fact the stores and perhaps a few of the lighter part of the engines, might repay the cost of removal, but the whole would certainly not amount to many thousands; probably hundreds would be a safer estimate of the amount to be realised clear of all expenses. To remove the vessel and take her into port, and either restore her or sell her, is then the only means of recovering any part of the whole of the capital invested in this ship. If she is so brought into port she may be worth, unrepaired, 40,000l., 50,000l., or 60,000l., according to the opportunities that may offer themselves of employing her usefully or selling her. The only question is, then, how at the least expense, and at the smallest risk, is the vessel to be got into port? But, as I will now endeavour to prove to you, the mode of getting the vessel off the shore and into port is again quite secondary to the consideration of how to preserve her where she is so that she may be in a condition to be removed, and to be worth removing, when the means of doing this are ready, and the proper time is arrived for attempting it.
In the first place I assert unhesitatingly, that no man in his senses and who thoroughly understands the circumstances of the case, the weight and position of the vessel, the amount of the rise and fall of the tide, and the draught of water around her, and the extraordinarily exposed situation, would dream of calculating upon completing the requisite means for floating her under three months.
In the meantime the ship must be protected. Even if it were practicable to construct the necessary apparatus, and to float the vessel to-morrow, it would be little short of madness to go to sea with her at this time of the year; but I am doing wrong to discuss a case which cannot arise. The vessel cannot, according to any rational calculation of chances, be got off under three months, and it is equally against all probability that, if left unprotected, there would be anything worth taking off at that time. It is useless, therefore, at this moment discussing the best mode of floating the vessel; and I think, under such circumstances, it would be most unwise hastily to determine upon any plan. The first thing is to know whether there are any means of preserving the vessel, and whether any such plans can be carried into effect at some reasonable cost, which it may be worth incurring. I have looked at the vessel, and considered the very exposed situation in which she is placed (and a more exposed one could hardly be found), and I am convinced that no fixed breakwater of ordinary construction could be made at any reasonable expense, or in time to prevent mischief. There is no depth of sand into which to drive piles, and the rock is too uneven and broken to allow of any framing being constructed and secured to it; and any framework would be liable to be destroyed during the progress of its construction, as that already attempted has been, and the timber might be the cause of serious damage to the ship. The plan I should recommend would at least be free from these objections, would be comparatively inexpensive, and I am firmly convinced would be perfectly effectual as a protection. At the same time few persons who have not seen the effect of a sea beating against fagots will share in that conviction; what I recommend is, to form under the stern and along the exposed side of the vessel a mass of fagots made of strong and long sticks, and used in the manner which has been so successfully practised in Holland and elsewhere, for the repair and protection of banks against the sea. The fagots should be packed closely, and for a considerable thickness against the ship’s side and up to the level of the decks, and secured with rods run vertically through the mass, and chains laid horizontally and binding the whole tightly to the ship. The heaviest sea has no effect upon such a mass, and I believe the vessel would remain as uninjured and indeed as unaffected by the sea as if in dock; 8,000 or 10,000 fagots, 300 or 400 fathoms of 1 inch or ¾ inch second-hand chain cable, none of which need be lost, 300 or 400 ¾ inch rods sharpened at the ends, 1,000 bags to fill with sand, with what stores you have on board, would suffice; and, if next coming springs and the gales which have hitherto accompanied them are safely passed, I cannot foresee any difficulty whatever in the way of completing the protection I propose. Of course, in all works dependent upon wind, weather, and tides, certainty cannot be obtained; but of one thing I am quite certain, that no other plan offers the same chance of success, or at so small a cost. I have communicated to Captain Claxton the steps which I took, in conjunction with Captain Hosken, for procuring the fagots before I left Dundrum; I have also communicated to him the directions which I gave with respect to the engines, &c., and it is unnecessary therefore that I should repeat them. I will only recapitulate in a few words the substance of the advice I have above given, and of my reasoning. You have a valuable piece of property lying on a most exposed shore; if preserved for a few months that property will in all probability be worth 40,000l. or 50,000l.; if neglected for a few weeks longer it will probably be worth nothing. Can you, as men of business, under such circumstances, waste your time at this moment in discussing what you will do in three months hence, and what plan you will then adopt to take your property to market, but will you not rather first and immediately adopt decisive steps for preserving that property, and then consider what you had best do with it?
I have no wish to escape the responsibility of advising you, as you request me to do so, as to my opinion of the best plan to be adopted hereafter for removing the ship; but adhering to the principle that I have laid down, I should decline to do so at present, did I not see reason to fear that you might be losing time and money by relying upon expectations which I am convinced would be disappointed. I would strongly urge upon you not to place your reliance upon any plan which depends upon floating the vessel by camels, and taking her to sea unrepaired, and therefore entirely dependent upon those camels. The immense breadth of these floating camels, and the risk of taking such an unmanageable floating ill-connected mass to sea, cannot have been correctly or sufficiently estimated; and the certainty of the whole going to the bottom, in the event of even a very moderate gale of wind or a slight swell, has been apparently quite lost sight of. I am also of opinion that the difficulty of lifting the vessel at all by auxiliary floats has been underrated. The vessel has worked herself about 5 or 6 feet into the solid rock and sand, and may very probably get a little deeper before the time for lifting arrives. She must therefore be lifted, say at least 4 feet to 4 feet 6 inches, before she could be got out of the dock she has made; and the floating power must therefore be calculated at least to raise her 5 feet 6 inches, so as to be quite sure of moving her. Now there is not more than 10 feet water around the vessel even at high water of ordinary springs, and it would be impossible to calculate upon more than 9 feet as a certainty. No floating power worth having can be got in the vessel, and the floating vessels must therefore be capable of sustaining the whole weight, with a draught when the vessel is lifted of only about 4 feet. The weight to be sustained is 2,000 tons, and to do this with vessels drawing only 4 feet would require that they should be upwards of 30 feet in breadth on each side, forming with the ship a total width of upwards of 100 to 120 feet, and upwards of 300 feet in length. I do not say that this operation is impracticable, but it is at least a very difficult one, and must be almost entirely dependent upon weather, and, unless in perfectly smooth water, a very hazardous one. My belief and conviction is that the safe mode of proceeding, and by far the cheapest, will be to lift the vessel by mechanical means, to lay ways under her, and to haul her up sufficiently far for her to be safe from the sea; to repair her just sufficiently to make her water-tight, then launch and bring her to Liverpool or Bristol. But, as I have before stated, there is time to consider these points, if in the meantime we take steps to preserve the ship. If the property is not even now worth protecting, it will indeed be waste of money to be preparing at some considerable expense to remove what will in all probability be only then a valueless carcase.
If the Directors should determine upon adopting the course I have recommended, I must remind them that the plan is one depending entirely on the skill, the vigour, the aptitude for expedients, and possibly, if bad weather should come on, and day after day the work be destroyed, on the unwearying perseverance and determined confidence in the plan of the person directing it, and the sufficiency of means at his command.
I cannot conclude without doing justice to Mr. Bremner, whom I met on board, and acknowledging the friendly and liberal manner in which he discussed the various means to be adopted, and assisted me with his valuable advice; and, although I may have somewhat differed with him as to the advisability of attempting to float the vessel away to sea without first repairing her, yet upon most points we were perfectly agreed; and I firmly believe that if any man could take her off (and if it would be prudent to let him do so), Mr. Bremner’s great experience and sound practical knowledge and good sense in devising any plan, and his energy and skill in carrying it out, would ensure every chance of success which the circumstances admit of.[133]