We are left then, to look for more satisfactory explanations of the fate of the big collier. One possibility is that the manganese developed dangerous gases in the hold and caused a terrific explosion, which blew the ship out of the water without warning, killed almost all on board and so wrecked the boats that none could reach land. The only trouble with this is that a nineteen thousand ton ship, when destroyed by an explosion, is certain to leave a great mass of surface wreckage, which will drift ashore sooner or later or be observed by passing vessels in any travelled lane. It happens that vessels sent out by the Navy Department visited every ness and cove and bay along the coast from Brazil to Hatteras, every island in the West Indies and every quarter of the circling seas without ever finding so much as a splinter belonging to the collier. Fishermen and boatmen in all the great region were questioned, encouraged with promises of reward and sent seeking, but they, too, found never a spar or scrap of all that great ship. This also seems to dispose of the possibility of a disaster at the hands of a German raider or submarine. Besides, to emphasize the matter once more, the German records show that there is no possibility of anything of this sort. The suspicion has been officially and categorically denied and there is no reason for concealment now. There remains one further possibility, which probably conceals the truth. The _Cyclops_, like her sister ships, the _Neptune_ and _Jupiter_, was topheavy. She carried, like them, six big steel derricks on a superstructure fifty feet from her main deck. This great weight aloft made it dangerous for the ship to roll. Indeed she could not roll, like other heavy vessels, very far without capsizing. We have but to suppose that with her one crippled engine she ran into heavy weather or perhaps a tidal wave, that she heeled over suddenly, her cargo shifted and her heavy top turned her upside down, all in a few seconds. In that event there would have been no time for using the wireless, no chance to launch any boats. Also, with everything battened and tied down, ship-shape for a naval vessel travelling in time of war, especially if the weather was a little heavy, there is the strong possibility that nothing could have been loose to float free. In this manner the whole big ship with all her parts and all who rode upon her may have been dumped into the sea and carried to the depths. One of the floating mines dropped off our Southern Coast in the previous year by the U 121 may have done the fatal rocking, it is true. There is no better explanation, and I have reason to know that an upset of this sort is the theory held by naval builders and naval officials generally. But certainly there is none and a satisfying answer is not likely to come from the graveyard of the deep. BIBLIOGRAPHY Note--the number in parenthesis after each reference indicates the chapter of this volume concerned.