Page:Wonderful magazine of strange adventures, singular occurrences, and remarkable incidents.pdf/15



a thousand brave and daring exploits performed during our late contest with France, one occurred, to which, though of a more pacific and less brilliant kind, we will venture to give the preference:—"On the 4th of June 1804, after a royal salute from the principal fort, St. Heliere, in the island of Jersey, the matches used on the occasion were lodged in the magazine, without being properly extinguished. On the evening of the same day, smoke was perceived to issue through an air-hole in one end of the magazine, and the alarm was of course soon spread. In the midst of the panic occasioned by the discovery, there were three men, viz. Edward Towrel, a carpenter, who was the first that volunteered his services, William Ponteney, a soldier, and a Mr P. Leys, who were bold enough to advance to and break open the magazine, where they found two caissons of wood, filled with ammunition, on fire, near which stood an open barrel of gunpowder! a flannel cartridge was almost burnt through, and some of the beams that supported the roof were on fire. By their courage and exertions the fire was at length totally extinguished."

The magazine, it seems, contained 200 barrels of gunpowder, besides charged bombs, caissons, and other combustibles. Had an explosion taken place, the loss of lives and of property would have been great and melancholy. An action of this sort requires more cool