Deep Ocean Expeditions

About ten minutes past four a.m, the ice passing the ship awoke me, and the door of my cabin, from the pressure, opened: I immediately hurriedly put on my clothes, and on getting up found some hands on the ice, endeavoring to save the boats, but they were instantly crushed to pieces; they little thought, when using their efforts to save the boats, that the Breadalbane was in so perilous a situation. I went forward to hail the Phoenix, for men to save the boats, and whilst doing so, the ropes by which we were secured parted, and a heavy nip took the ship making every timber in her creak, and the ship tremble all over. I looked in the main hold, and saw the beams giving way; I hailed those on the ice, and told them of our critical situation, they not for one moment suspecting it. I then rushed to my cabin, hauled out my portmanteau on the deck, and roared like a bull to those in their beds to jump out and save their lives. The startling effect on them might be more easily imagined than described. On reaching the deck those on the ice called out to me to jump over the side, that the ship was going over.

Everyone then abandoned the ship, with what few clothes they saved - some with only what they had on.The ship now began to sink fast, and from the time her bowsprit touched the ice, until her mastheads were out of sight, did not occupy above one minute and a half. It was a very sad and unceremonious way of being turned out of our ship. For the time the first nip took her, until her disappearance, did not occupy more than fifteen minutes.

I, as well as all the spectators of the last of the Breadalbane, was astonished at the rapid manner in which she went down. I can now easily imagine why the two missing Arctic ships (Erebus and Terror) have never been heard of, and it is but too probable in my mind, they were lost not many miles from my old vessel, and that all hands met with a watery grave."

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