'History of the Indian Navy. (1613-1863).' [‎193] (212/622)

history of the indian navy.
193
We would not say that the loss of the ' Cleopatra' and the
valuable lives on board her, is to be laid at Sir Robert Oliver's
door, for it is probable that the stoutest ship would have suc
cumbed to the cyclone had she been caught in its vortex; but,
equally, we cannot acquit the Superintendent of serious wrong
in disregarding the remonstrances of the Captain of the 6 Cleo
patra,' which might have battled through that terrible ordeal had
she been made perfectly seaworthy. For the sad calamity that
overtook that ship, after the incident that occurred in his office,
Sir Robert Oliver is entitled to the commiseration of every one
in a degree only less than the gallant seamen who were lost
in the 4 Cleopatra.'
Great anxiety was entertained at Bombay for the safety of
the 6 Sesostris,' which had left Aden for Cannanore, with
troops, on the 5th of April, and, no steamer being available.
Commander Frushard, on the 27th of April, sailed in the sloop-
of-war 6 Coote,' for Vingorla, where he found the 4 Sesostris' at
anchor, she having arrived in safety at CannaHore, on the 22nd
of April. The ' Mermaid' and other vessels were wrecked at
Vingorla, and the 'Buckinghamshire,'* a fine Indiaman of
1,700 tons, which got into the vortex of the cyclone within
sixty miles of Vingorla, was totally dismasted during the storm,
which raged with unparalleled fury from the 16th to the 19th
of April. No special search was at this time made for the
' Cleopatra,' and the 6 Coote 5 returned to Bombay; but, as time
wore on, and no news was received of her arrival at Singapore,
anxious fears began to be whispered about, and, at length, on
the 28th of August, Lieutenant John Wellington Young was
despatched to the Laccadive Islands in the 6 Auckland,' to make
distance run from Bombay, he says, the probable position of the 4 Cleopatra,' " at
8 a.m. on the 17th, was in lat. 12° 5' N. about forty miles from the land, with
Elicalpine Island, the nearest of the Laccadives, fifty miles to the windward. A
reference to the chart will show that she was nearer its vortex than the 4 Mer
maid,' £ Faize Rubahny,' or ' Victoria,' and consequently must have been more
exposed to its greatest violence than either of these vessels."
* The ' Buckinghamshire' was built in Bombay Dockyard, of teak and copper-
fastened, for the Hon. Company's Mercantile Service, and, probably, a nobler
■ship never left the builder's hands. The hurricane raged with such unparalleled
violence, that one of her heavy cutters was torn from the davits and blown across
the poop like a straw, and the poop ports having been forced in by the wind, the
bulkheads of the cuddy were blown down. During the calm, while in the vortex
of the hurricane, her decks were covered with dead and dying birds, and pro
bably few ships but those built by the Parsee shipbuilders at Bombay, would
have escaped destruction during an ordeal as terrible as that encountered by the
4 Salsette' frigate in the ice of the Baltic. The cost of the ' B ackinghamshire ' to
the Company was no less than £93,000, and she was sold, on the lapse ofthe Com
pany's charter, in 1833, for £10,500. In the year 1848, the 'Euphrates,' brig,
afforded another proof of the strength of the Bombay-built ships, for having
grounded on the coral reef surrounding the inland of Corgo, situated two
miles north of Kharrack, a dead lee shore, during a south-easter, on a December
night, she remained hammering away on the coral reef for four or five days,
until she knocked herself a bed, and, finally, got off without any material
damage.
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