2-914-062 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Storm in Balaclava Bay, 1854. Crimean War: Royal Navy ships lost in bad weather on the Black Sea. 'Ship Caducis; Ship Progress; Maltese Brig; Steamer Melbourne; HMS Avon; HMS Vesuvius; Wild Wave; Ship Mercia...experience showed that the Admiralty agents here had been sadly lacking in knowledge or discretion to permit so many valuable vessels to remain exposed to the chances of the weather in so unsafe an anchorage...The sea, which seemed to gather in a dark mass under the heavy clouds which covered the sky at dawn, was gradually lashed into the whiteness of a boiling cauldron...In the midst of this awful cauldron lay about thirty ships...A few miserable objects, much mangled and bruised, were thrown up alive by the waves: they were six in number...Poor Captain Lewis was crushed between the ship and the shore...The number of lives lost has been immense...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1854.