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2 MGI vol 2124 number 1516

bodies from the ruins. Approaching the ruins of a house I first heard the loud sobs of, and then saw, a sailor walking up and down in a dazed and distracted way; his sobs were so heartrending that I could not help asking him if I could help him in any way, and what the trouble was. "This is my trouble, Sir" he said, between great sobs, and taking me around to the other side of the tumbled down house he knelt down beside three prone and lifeless bodies. They were those of his mother, wife and daughter. One of hundreds of similar cases.

The next day I worked at, or near, Richmond, and had under me several sailors from one of the ships in port; I cannot praise their work too highly [underlined], for they toiled with their bare hands, the raging blizzard at the time making labour most difficult, for hour after hour, recovering some forty or fifty bodies. In the course of this work, I came across the bodies of men and women without a stitch of clothing on, and presume they were in bed at the time of the explosion and had their sleeping garments blown completely away. A curious thing which