THE LOSS OF THE MONITOR.

Patea Mail, Volume XI, Issue 133, 26 February 1886, Page 4

THE LOSS OF THE MONITOR.

(By a Survivor.) ( Concluded,) As I ascended the turret ladder the sea broke over the ship, and came pouring down the hatchway with so much force that it took me off my feet, and nt the same time the steam broke from the boiler-room, as the water had reached the fires, and for an instant I seemed to realise that we bail gone dotvu. Onr fires were oni, and I heard the water blowing out of the boilers. I reported my obseivations to the captain, at the same ’time saw a boat alongside. The captain gave orders for the men 10 leave the ship, and 15, all of whom were seamen and whom I had placed ray confidence upon, whore the ones who crowded the first boat to leave the ship, , I was disgusted at witnessing the scramble, anil, m t feeling in the least alarmed about myself, resolved, than I, an “ old haymaker,” as landsmen are called, would stick to the strip as long ns my officers. I saw three of these men sweni from the deck and carried leewud on the swift current. Baling was now resumed. I occupied the turret all alone, and passed buckets from the lower hatchway to the man on the top of the turret. I took off my coat—one that I had received from home only a few days before (1 could not. feel that onr noble Hi tie ship was yet lost) —and rolling it up with my bools, drew the tampion from one of the guns, pb-cad them inside, and replaced the tampion. A black c>t was silting on the breech of one of the guns, bowline of those boats- 1 and solemn tunes which no one can appreciate who is not filled with superstitions which I had been taught by tie sailors, who »rc. always afraid to kill a cat, I would almost as soon have touched a ghost, but I caught her, and placing her in another gun, replaced trie wad and tampion ; but I could still Lear that distressing yowl. As 1 raised my last bucket to the upper hatchway no one was there to take it, I scrambled up the ladder and found that we below had been deserted. I shouted to those on the berth-deck, “ Come up, the officers have left the ship, and a boat is along side.’’ As I reached the top of the turret I saw a boat made fust on the weather quarter filled with men. Three others were standing on deck trying to get on board. One man was floating leeward, shouting in vain for help ; another, who hurriedly passed me and jumped down from the turret, was swept off by a breaking wave and never rose. I was excited, feeling that it was the only chance to be saved. I made a loose line fast to one of the stanchions, and let myself down from the turret, the ladder having been washed away. The moment I struck the deck the sea broke over it and swept me as I had seen it sweep my shipmates. I grasped one of the smoke-stack braces, and, hand-over-hand, ascended to keep my head above water, It required all my strength to keep the sea from tearing me away. As it swept from the vessel I found myself dangling in the air nearly at Tie top of the smoke-stack. 1 let myself fail, and succeeded in reaching a life-lino that encircled the deck by means of short stanchions, and to which the boat was attached. The sea again broke over ns, lifting me feel upward as 1 still clung to the life-line. I thought I had nearly measured the depth of the ocean, when I felt the turn, and as my head rose above the water I was somewhat daz-d bom being so nearly drowned, and spouted up, it seemed, more tiiaa a gallon of water that had found its way into my lungs. I was then about 20ft from the other men, whom I found to be the captain and one seaman ; the other had been washed overboard and was now struggling in the water. The men in the boat were pushing back on ihoiroars to keep the boat from being washed on to the Monitor’s deck, so that the boat had to be hauled in by the painter about 10ft or I2ft. The first Lieutenant, 8. D. Greene, and other officers in the boot, were shouting, “Is the captain on board ?” and, with severe struggles to have our voices heard above the roar of the wind and sea, wo were shouting “No,” and trying to haul in the boat, which we at last succeeded iu doing. The captain, over caring for his men, requested us to get in, but we both, in the same voice, told him to got in first. The moment he was over the hows of the boat Lieutenant Groenc cried, “ Cut the painter 1 cut the painter !” I thought, “ Now or lost,” and in 1-ss time than I can explain if, exerting my strength beyond imagination, I hauled in the boat, sprang, caught on the gunwale, * was pulled into the boat with a boathook in the hands of one of the men, ' and rook my seat with one of the oars- ' men. The other man, named Thomas Join , managed to get info the boat in ; some way, I cannot toil how, and ho was I tho last man saved from that ill-fated ship. As we were cut loose I saw several men standing on the top of the 1 turret, apparently afraid to venture down 1 upon deck, and it may have been that they were deterred by seeing others washed overboard while I was getting | into the boat.

After a fearful ansi dangerous passage over the frantic seas, we reached th Rh ode Island, which still had the tow" line caught in her wheel, and had drifted perhaps two miles to leeward. We came alongside under the lee bows, where the first boat, that had left the Monitor nearly an hour before, had jast discharged its men ; hut we found that gening on board the Rhode Island was a harder task than getting from the Monitor. We wore carried by the sea Irum stem to stern, for to have made fast would have been fatal; the boat was hounding against the ship’s sides ; sometimes it was below tho wheel, and then, on the summit of a huge wave, far above the decks; then the two boats would crush together; and once, while Surgeon VV'eckes was holding on to the rail,* he lost his fingers by a collision which swamped (he other boat. Lines were th.owu to ns from the deck of the Rno ie Island, which were of no assist-

ance, foT not one of ns could climb a small rope; and besides, the men w’ ■ throw them wool 1 immediately let ■ their holds, in their excitement to thi another—which I found to be the ensi when I kept hauling in lope instead of climbing. It, must be understood that two vessels lying side by side, when there is any moiion to the sen, move alternately ;or in oilier words, one is constantly passing the oilier up or down. At one time, when our boat was near the hows of the steamer, we would rise upon the sea until we could touch her rail ; then in an instant, by a very rapid descent, we could touch her keel. While we were thus rising and falling upon the sen, I caught a rope, and Using with the boat managed to reach within a foot or two of the rail, when a man, if there had been one, could easily have hauled mo on hoard. But they bad, {>.ll followed after the boat, which nt that instant was washed astern, and I bung dangling in the air over the how ot the Rhode Island, with Ensign Norman Attwater hanging to the cat-head, 3it or 4it from mo, like myself, with both hands clinching a rope and shouting for some one to save him. Our hands grow painful and all the time weaker, until I saw his strength give way. Ho slipped a foot, caught again, and with his last prayei, • { O Go i 1” I saw Idm and sink, to rise no more. The ship rolled, and rose upon 'he sea, sometimes with ln-r keel out of water, so that I was hanging 30ft above the sea, and with the fate in view that had in-fallen our much-beloved companion, which no one had witnessed but myself. I still dung to the rope with aching bands, calling in vain for help. But I could not. be In-anl, for the wind shrieked far above my voice. My heart hero, for the only time in my life, gave up nope, and home and Iri- nds were most tenderly thought of. tide I was in this state, within a few seconds of giving up, the sea rolled forward, biinging with it tiro boat, and when I would have fallen into the sea, it was there. 1 can only recollect hearing an old sailor say, as I fell into the bottom of the boat, “ Whore in did he come from ?’’ When I became aware of what was going on, no one hail succeeded in getting out of the boat, which then lay just forward of the wheel-house. Our captain ordered them to throw bowlines, which, was immediately done. The second one I caught, and, placing myself within the loop, wos hauled on board, I assisted in Indping the others out of the boat, when it again went back to the Monitor. It did not reach it, however, and after drifting about on the ocean several days it was nicked up by a passing vessel and carried to Philadelphia. It was half-pas I 12, the night of t : e 31sfc of Peeemher, 1862, when I stood on the forecastle of the Rhode Island, Watching the red and while lights that hung from the pennant-staff above the turret, and which now and then were seen as we would perhaps rise on the sea together, until at last just as the moon had passed below the horizon, th-.-y were lost, and the Monitor, whose history is familiar to us all, was seen no more. The Rho le Island cruised about the scene of the disast r the remainder of the night and the next forenoon in hope of finding the boat that had been lost ; then she returned direct to Fori Monroe, where we arrived next day with onr melancholy news .—Francis B. Butt?, in the Century.