2-982-270 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Laying the Atlantic Telegraph Cable - Breaking Adrift of the Coal on Board the "Agamemnon", 1858. A storm on 20th June. '...everything broke adrift, whether secured or not, and the uproar and confusion were terrific...the scene almost defies description. Amid loud shouts and efforts to save themselves, a confused mass of sailors, boys, and marines, with deck-buckets, ropes, ladders, and everything that could get loose, and which had fallen back again to the port side, were being hurled again in a mass across the ship to starboard...the coals stowed on the main-deck broke loose, and, smashing everything before them, went over among the rest to leeward. The coaldust hid everything on the main-deck in an instant, but the crashing could still be heard going on in all directions, as the lumps and sacks of coal, with stanchions, ladders, and mess tins, went leaping about the decks, pouring down the hatchways, and crashing through the glass skylights into the engine-room below. Still it was not done, and, surging again over another tremendous wave, the Agamemnon dropped down still more to port, and the coals on the starboard side of the lower deck gave way also, and carried everything before them'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.