7 SEPTEMBER 1878, Page 2

The last stage in the operations connected with the raising

and removing of the Eurydice' has at length been reached, the pumps having beaten the inflow of water, and on Sunday morning last the ill-fated hull was towed into its last berth in Portsmouth Harbour, to be broken up. The ' Eurydice ' is the largest vessel which has ever been removed from a sea-bottom, and the depth of water in which she sank and the currents off Luecorabe ren- dered all the efforts to raise her exceptionally arduous. The finding of the court-martial was delivered on Monday last, and in it the dead as well as the survivors are entirely exonerated from blame. The court found that the disaster to the 'Eurydice'

was caused "by pressure of wind upon her sails during a sudden and exceptionally dense snow-storm, which overtook her when its approach was partially hidden by the proximity of the ship to high land." They also considered that the fact of some of the upper half-ports on the main deck being open, "was justifiable and usual, under the state of the -wind and weather up to the time of the actual occurrence of the storm." It is to be presumed that the court did not consider it the duty of the officers of the ship to regulate their ports according to barometrical indications, which are very marked before the approach of a heavy squall. It is just because "the state of the wind and weather up to the time of the actual occurrence of a storm" is sometimes so misleading, that the warnings of a barometer are so extremely valuable. It is always the same. Our officers, naval and military, never fail, except when they ought to rely on the teaching of science, and not on their own observation.