equipment and of glorious enterprise. The one was an English frigate, the Alceste, having on board our ambassador to China; the other was a French frigate, the Medusa, taking out the suite of a governor for one of the colonies of France on the coast of Africa. The importance of the mission on which each ship was despatched, and the value of the freight, would seem to assure us that the Alceste and the Medusa were officered and manned by the best crews that could be selected. Two nations, rivals in science and civilization, who had lately been contending for the empire of the world, and in the course of that contest had exhibited the most heroic examples of promptitude and courage, were nautically represented, we may suppose, by the elite who walked the decks of the Alceste and the Medusa. If any calamity should happen to either, it could not be attributed to a failure of that brilliant gallantry, which the English and French had equally displayed on the most trying occasions.

But a calamity of the most fearful nature did befal both, out of which the Alceste's crew were delivered with life and honour untouched, when that of the Medusa sank under a catastrophe, which has become a proverb and a bye-word to mariners. Both ships were wrecked. For an account of the good conduct, of the calm and resolute endurance, and of the admirable discipline to which, under Providence, the preservation of the crew of the Alceste is to be attributed, see pages 204-226 of this volume. A total relaxation of discipline, an absence of all order, precaution, and presence of mind, and a contemptible disregard of everything and of everybody but self, in the hour of common danger, filled up the full measure of horrors poured out upon the guilty crew of the Medusa. She struck on a sand-bank under circumstances which admitted of the hope of saving all on board. The shore was at no great distance, and the weather was not so boisterous as to threaten the speedy destruction of the ship when the accident first happened.

There were six boats of different dimensions available to take off a portion of the passengers and crew: there was time and there was opportunity for the construction of a raft to receive the remainder. But the scene of confusion began among officers and men at the crisis, when an ordinary exercise of forethought and composure would have been the preservation of all. Every man was left to shift for himself, and every man did shift for himself, in that selfish or bewildered manner which increased the general disaster. The captain was not among the last, but among the first to scramble into a boat; and the boats pushed off from the sides of the frigate, before they had taken in as many as each was capable of holding. Reproaches, recrimination, and scuffling took the place of order and of the word of command, both in the ship and in the boats, when tranquillity and order were indispensable for the common safety.

When the raft had received the miserable remnant, one hundred and fifty in number, for whom the boats had no room, or would make no room, it was found, when it was too late to correct the evil, that this last refuge of a despairing and disorderly multitude had been put together with so little care and skill, and was so ill provided with necessaries, that the planking was insecure; there was not space enough for protection from the waves, and charts, instruments, spars, sails, and stores were all deficient. A few casks of wine and some biscuits, enough for a single meal only, were all the provision made for their sustenance. The rush and scramble from the wreck had been accomplished with so little attention to discipline, that the raft had not a single naval officer to take charge of her. At first, the boats took the raft in tow, but in a short time, though the sea was calm and the coast was known to be within fifteen leagues, the boats cast off the tow-lines: and in not one of the six was there a sufficient sense of duty, or of humanity left, to induce the crew to remain by the floating planks—the forlorn hope of one hundred and fifty of their comrades and fellow-countrymen! Nay, it is related by the narrators of the wreck of the Medusa, that the atrocious cry resounded from one boat to another, 'Nous les abandonnons!'—'we leave them to their fate,'—until one by one all the tow-lines were cast off. During the long interval of seventeen days, the raft struggled with the waves. A small pocket compass was the only guide of the unhappy men, who lost even this in one of the reckless quarrels, which ensued every hour for a better place on the raft or a morsel of biscuit. On the first night twelve men were jammed between the timbers, and died under the agonies of crushed and mangled limbs. On the second night more were drowned, and some were smothered by the pressure towards the centre of the raft. Common suffering, instead of softening, hardened the hearts of the survivors against each other. Some of them drank wine till they were in a frenzy of intoxication, and attempted to cut the ropes which kept the raft together. A general fight ensued, many were killed, and many were cast into the sea during the struggle; and thus perished from sixty to sixty-five. On the third day portions of the bodies of the dead were devoured by some of the survivors. On the fourth night another quarrel and another fight, with more bloodshed, broke out. On the fifth morning, thirty only out of the one hundred and fifty were alive. Two of these were flung to the waves for stealing wine: a boy died, and twenty-seven remained, not to comfort and to assist each other, but to hold a council of destruction, and to determine who should be victims for the preservation of the rest. At this hideous council twelve were pronounced too weak to outlive much more suffering, and that they might not needlessly consume any part of the remaining stock of provisions, such as it was, (flying fish mixed with human flesh.) these twelve helpless wretches were deliberately thrown into the sea. The fifteen, who thus provided for their own safety by the sacrifice of their weaker comrades, were rescued on the seventeenth day after the wreck by a brig, sent out in quest of the wreck of the Medusa by the six boats, which reached the shore in safety, and which might have been the means of saving all on the raft, had not the crews been totally lost to every sentiment of generosity and humanity, when they cast off the tow-lines.

In fact, from the very first of the calamity which befel the Medusa, discipline, presence of mind, and every generous feeling, were at an end: and the abandonment of the ship and of the raft, the terrible loss of Life, the cannibalism, the cruelty, the sufferings, and all the disgraceful and inhuman proceedings, which have branded the modern Medusa with a name of infamy worse than that of the Gorgon,—the monster after which she was called,—originated in the want of that order and prompt obedience, which the pages of this volume are intended to record, to the honour of British seamen.

In the history of no less than forty shipwrecks narrated in this memorial of naval heroism,—of passive heroism, the most difficult to be exercised of all sorts of heroism,—there are very few instances of misconduct, and none resembling that on board the Medusa.

This contrast is marked and stated, not in an invidious spirit towards the French, but because there is no example on record, which furnishes such a comparison between the safety which depends on cool and orderly behaviour in the season of peril, and the terrible catastrophe which is hastened and aggravated by want of firmness, and confusion.

'It is impossible,' said a writer in the Quarterly Review, of October, 1817, 'not to be struck with the extraordinary difference of conduct in the officers and crew of the Medusa and the