When surveyed by the Admiralty before her departure from Southampton, she was reported capable of carrying fourteen 32-pounders, and two 10-inch pivot guns of 85 cwt. each on her main-deck; her coal bunkers were constructed to carry 1000 tons of coals, or upward of sixteen and a half days’ consumption at the rate of 2½ tons per hour for her twenty-six furnaces. Her engines were fitted in a framework independent of the vessel, so that little or no perceptible vibration was felt when they were at work: moreover, allowing 12 superficial feet for each man, she had accommodation in her lower decks for 360 soldiers, besides elegant cabins for first-class passengers. Her cost, when ready for sea, was somewhat over 100,000_l._ [Illustration: “AMAZON.”] On the 2nd of January, 1852, the _Amazon_, under command of Captain Symons, took her departure from Southampton with the usual mails for the British and foreign West Indies, the Gulf of Mexico, Spanish Main, &c., fifty passengers, and a large and valuable cargo. Her crew numbered 110, exclusive of the Admiralty officer in charge of the mails. The _Amazon_ was the first of the direct line of steam-ships arranged by the company to run fortnightly between Southampton and Chagres, touching only at St. Thomas, at which place various lines of branch packets for the accommodation of the West Indies, the Gulf of Mexico, &c., were to meet, diverging thence to the different islands and ports embraced in the new arrangements with Government, and thus establishing, as it was termed at the time, “a great steam ferry between Europe and the Isthmus of Panama.” In the course of the day after her departure, when steaming at the rate of about 9 miles an hour against a stiff south-west gale, the bearings of the paddle-shafts became so hot from the excessive friction of the new machinery, that on two occasions the engines had to be stopped to cool them, in one case for two and a half hours; after which everything appeared to be in order. But at midnight of the evening of the 4th January, when the _Amazon_ was somewhere about 110 miles west-south-west of the Scilly Islands, the watch on deck, to their dismay, discovered that a fire had broken out suddenly on the starboard side forward between the steam-chest and that portion of the deck whereon the galley stood, the flames at once rushing up the gangway in front of the foremost funnel. So sudden, indeed, was the conflagration that when the alarm bell, instantly sounded, brought the captain upon deck, it was only to witness the inevitable destruction of his ship; the force of the gale then blowing having spread the flames with such rapidity that every appliance, by means of wet swabs, buckets of water, and at last the fire pumps (for they had not been ready), proved alike utterly futile to check the progress of the fire.