The Thirtieth Street Dépôt, on the west side, also was crowded, and trains were leaving thence every few minutes.
Just before noon, the city was horror-stricken by the news of a frightful accident at Spuyten Duyvil. An overloaded train from the Thirtieth Street Dépôt there, through a broken switch, came into collision with another overloaded train from the Grand Central Dépôt. The slaughter was horrible. Twelve cars were derailed, and more than a hundred and twenty people, mostly women and children, killed.
While people were repeating this news to one another with white faces and trembling lips, the Spanish squadron was taking position and preparing to attack.
The English squadron moved outside the Spanish ships, and stood off and on under easy steam.
At precisely noon the white flag was lowered from the mast-head of the Spanish flag-ship and the Spanish flags were hoisted by all of the vessels. Immediately afterwards the "Numancia" delivered her broadside full upon the Coney Island battery.
Instantly the flag from the general's station was flung out, the signal-gun was discharged, and from all the sea-coast batteries the firing began.
IV.
IRON HAIL.
The position chosen by the attacking vessels was about one and a half miles to the south of Plumb Inlet. This point is distant from Fort Hamilton six miles, from Sandy Hook light seven miles, from Brooklyn Navy Yard nine and a half miles, and from the City Hall, New York City, about eleven miles, in a straight line. An ample depth of water to float ships drawing twenty-four feet here exists. The situation was sufficiently distant from the shore batteries to render the effect of their projectiles on the armor of the vessels quite inconsiderable.
The ships, however, did not remain motionless, but steamed slowly around in a circle of some two miles in diameter, each vessel delivering her fire as she reached the point above specified. In this way, the chances of being struck by projectiles from shore were not only lessened, but the injury which they could do was decreased by the greater distance which they would be compelled to traverse to strike the ships during the progress of the latter around the further side of the circle.