the corporal were averted by one of the prisoners striking off the padlock with a hammer that had accidentally been left in the prison early that morning, it having been used to remove the irons from the only prisoners who wore them for some offence." So the convicts reached the deck in time to avail themselves of such means of escape as offered. But these were few. Had the masts been cut down, when the long boat was lowered, they might have formed a temporary bridge over which the people might have passed in comparative safety to the surf boats. As it was, nearly two-thirds of them were drowned. This catastrophe attracted great attention at the time. At Cape Town the sudden and apparently unaccountable destruction of the ship led to great excitement in the public mind. A very searching inquiry was therefore set on foot. The _débris_ of the wreck having been carefully examined by Captain Sir John Marshall, R. N., he reported unhesitatingly that the _Waterloo_ must have been unseaworthy when she left England. "General decay and rottenness of the timbers appeared in every step we took." She had been repeatedly repaired at considerable outlay, but she had run so long that she was quite beyond cure. As a further explanation of the disaster the mate and crew were charged with being drunk at the time the ship struck. But the only evidence in support of this was an intercepted letter of one of the convicts who had been saved. He asserted that the chief mate could not keep his legs; that in trying to drive in a nail he staggered and fell. The rolling of the vessel was deemed a more than sufficient explanation of this. Another charge was made against one of the seamen who swam back to the ship after he had once actually reached the shore. No man in his sober senses, urged the convict witness, would have risked his life in this way; whereas it was clearly proved that no man otherwise than sober could possibly have battled successfully with the surf. It is but fair to add that the unseaworthy condition of the _Waterloo_ was distinctly denied at Lloyd's. They certified that at the time of sailing she was "in an efficient state of repair and equipment, and fully competent for the safe performance of any voyage to any part of the world." And as the credit of the transport office had been more or less impugned, a return was about this time called for by the House, of the number of convict-ships which had foundered at sea, or not been heard of, between 1816 and 1842. It was satisfactorily shown that in this way not one single ship had been lost through all those years.