It was off this Esplanade that in 1782 went down the _Royal George_, one of our finest men-of-war, upset by a land breeze when heeled over safely enough, as was supposed, in calm weather. The story goes that a pig-headed officer of the watch would not attend to the carpenter’s report that she was filling; then naval discipline cost the loss of seven hundred lives. Great numbers of bodies came ashore at Ryde, to be buried under what is now a trim promenade. Others found a resting-place in Portsea Churchyard, where a monument to their memory stands under the noble tower of the new Church, so well seen from the railway as it enters Portsmouth. The catastrophe is best remembered by Cowper’s epitaph, “Toll for the Brave!” and by the narrative in Marryat’s _Poor Jack_. Less well known are Sir Henry Englefield’s lines, written when the graves could still be seen near the shore. “Thou! who dost tread this smooth and verdant mead, Viewing delighted the fair hills that rise On either hand, a sylvan theatre; While in the front with snowy pinions closed, And thunders silent, Britain’s guardian fleet On the deep bosom of the azure sea Reposes aweful--pass not heedless by These mould’ring heaps, which the blue spiry grass Scarce guards from mingling with the common earth. Mark! in how many a melancholy rank. The graves are marshall’d--Dost thou know the fate Disastrous, of their tenants? Hushed the winds, And smooth the billows, when an unseen hand Smote the great ship, and rift her massy beams: She reeled and sunk.--Over her swarming decks The flashing wave in horrid whirlpool rushed; While from a thousand throats, one wailing shriek Burst--and was heard no more. Then day by day, The ebbing tide left frequent on the sand, The livid corpse; and his o’erloaded net The shuddering fisher loathed to drag ashore. And here, by friends unknown, unmarked, unwept, They rest.”[1] Another event in Ryde’s history was the landing here of the Empress of the French after Sedan. Her escape from Paris had been conducted by Dr Evans, the American dentist; then from Deauville, Sir John Burgoyne brought her across in his yacht through such stormy weather, that it had almost been forced to put back into some French port. At sunrise, a Ryde hotel close to the pier turned away two travel-worn ladies accompanied by a gentleman, who found refuge in the York Hotel. So the unfortunate Empress, with her small suite, could at last rest in peace. The first thing she did, Dr Evans tells us, was to seek comfort in a Bible that, by chance as she supposed, lay in the small top room given to this _incognita_. Charles X. on his final exile, had also made for the Isle of Wight, arriving off Cowes, but he does not seem to have landed there.