But the majority of ships seemed to have been flung together in a confused tangled mass close to the Howrah Railway Ghat.  Many were sunk; others in the act of sinking; and the remainder so battered and hammered about as to defy description, rendering it extremely difficult to determine whether most of them would not become a constructive loss.  My eldest brother was in Calcutta at the time, in command of a vessel called the Vespasian.  He had been spending the previous night at my chummery at Ballygunge, and when he went the next morning to get on board his ship she was nowhere to be seen.  At last he traced her, jammed in amongst the ruck at Howrah, and that was the last he ever saw of her, and he had subsequently to return home overland minus his vessel.  He afterwards joined the service of the Pacific Steam Navigation Co., eventually becoming commodore of the fleet, a position which he held for a great number of years, until his final retirement.

In order to convey some slight idea of the force of the wind I will just mention that there was in command of one of the vessels in port a man of great weight and bulk who had been spending the night on shore.  When he attempted to cross the maidan on foot the next morning he was thrown violently down, flat on his face, two or three times, and he had to scramble back again the best way he could.  Another striking evidence of the violence of the storm was to be seen in the myriads of dead crows lying about all over the place, and it really seemed as if there was not one left alive.  But unfortunately it was not long before we were undeceived, and they soon appeared to be quite as numerous as ever.  As I have already stated, the destruction of trees and shrubs was very great—­a loss that the city could ill afford, more particularly on the maidan, which at that time was very bare of trees and foliage generally.  The various topes dotted about that we now see had not then come into existence, and the avenue of trees lining the sides of Mayo Road had only been recently planted.

[Illustration:  The “Govindpur” on her Beam Ends.]

[Illustration:  S S “Thunder” on shore, at Colvin Ghat.]

I recollect there were also no trees surrounding Government House, nor in the vicinity of the Eden Gardens.  And there were none on the space fronting Esplanade Row, West.  Dalhousie Square and Old Court House Street were also very bare of trees—­scarcely one to be seen.  The loss of life amongst the natives was appalling, caused principally by the huge storm or tidal wave accompanying the cyclone, resembling a solid wall of water, which at Diamond Harbour rose to the height of 34 feet; when it reached Calcutta it was 27 to 28 feet, rushing up the Hooghly from the sea at the rate of 20 miles an hour, destroying and overwhelming everything it encountered in its wild and devastating career.  It was, of course, a matter of extreme difficulty to arrive at any very reliable estimate of the number who perished, owing