Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/574

 562 7EDEBAL BEFOBTEB. �There is some contradiction in the evidence as to whether or not the bed on which the ship lay after she was beached was a quicksand. Admirai Smyth, in his Dictionary of Nautical Terms, defines this to be "a fine-grained, loose sand, into which a ship sinks by her own weight as soon as the water retreats from her bottom." It is imma- terial what name we apply to the sand ofE Cape Henry. The fact is that there, and all along the coast southward for several hundred miles, the sand is a fine, movable substance, which, when a heavy body is resting upon it, retreats from under it by the action of the currents of the ocean which there constantly prevail, leaving a bed into which the body sinks deeper and deeper the longer it remains in the position. There is no possibility of any substance, which, jn specifie gravity is too heavy to float upon the surface of the water, being lifted out of its bed in this sand and floated upon the shore. AU the vessels that are beached upon the sands of this long coast invariably continue to sink, deeper and deeper, until they disappear from sight under the sea into the sand. �The fate of the United States steam-ship Huron, wreoked off Kitty Hawk, November 27, 1876, was a notable historical exemplifi cation •of this characteristic of the sands of this part of the coast. �When the wreckers took charge of the ship at 6 p. m. on the even- ing of the 6th, and with their cable took hold of her aft, and began to heave upon the cable attached to the anohors planted outside the breakers, they checked the wallowing and sinking proeess; but the ship had been there nearly 24 hours on the beaoh, and had already sunk some seven feet into the sand. The wreoking company con- sisted of the libellant, who remained in Norfolk to forward promptly whatever might be needed at the wreck; Capt. Stoddard, who had the general direction of the wrecking operations, and who remained moat of the time on theB. & J. Baker; Capt. Nelson, who had charge of the work on board the Sandringham; Capt. Orrin Baker, master of the wrecking steamer B. & J. Baker ; Capt. Oakley, of the steam- tug Mollie Weutz; and 80 or more other persons, composing the crews of the several vessels employed, and embracing the wrecking hands, a gang of about 30 of whom operated on the ship. Besides the vessels already named, the tugs Spring Garden and Gr. W. Eoper, the wrecking schooners Henrietta, Joseph Allen, and Annie Clark, three surf-boats, and the lighter Neptune, were engaged in the enter- prise. ��� �