approaching a sailing ship at great speed, was perhaps a trial to weak nerves. At all events they were all in a howling funk when I saw them. That was No. 1 collision. We had all our work cut out to get the ship ready for sailing day. She was booked up full of passengers, and there was an apparently endless stream of stores and equipment coming down to the last minute. To the credit of the Company be it said that the work was done, and done properly. I cannot remember that anything was omitted. The worst part of the business was that I had in the main a new set of officers, although my chief engineer from the last ship was with me. It is of the greatest advantage in a case like this to have people with you that you know you can depend upon, and with the best intentions in the world you cannot have this feeling with strangers. It must be remembered that a new ship is always something in the nature of a surprise-packet. On the afternoon of October 25 we left the dock, and by the time we got to Gravesend it was quite dark with a strong ebb tide running, and the reach full of ships, mostly at anchor. As we were to stay there the night it was necessary to turn the ship round, and when we got across the river there was not a great deal of room for anything to get past us. This was discovered by one of the Aberdeen steamers called the _Ban Righ_, for in sweeping past and under our stern she cleared the whole of her starboard side of bridge, deckhouses, bulwarks, etc., and she also dented our stern and carried away rudder chains and some of our ornamental gilt work. There were circumstances connected with this that would have made a cat laugh, but a very stiff upper lip had to be kept, and I greatly admired the admirably cool way in which the incident was treated by Mr. Strickland, the London manager, who had come down the river with us and alluded to the collision as “a river bump.” I went down the river in a tug to see the extent of the damage to the other ship, and the next day we left for Plymouth. This collision No. 2 was, I believe, settled by both parties bearing their own damages, for not even a bench of judges could have rightly apportioned the blame in this case. I find by abstract that we left Plymouth at 7.30 a.m. on the morning of the 28th, after a fairly strenuous week’s work.