Night clouds gathered black and threatening, and it appeared as if the enemy were carrying all before them. The French battleship _Neptune_, seeing the guns of all three batteries had been considerably weakened, was steaming slowly into the mouth of the Tyne, followed by the Russian cruiser _Syzran_, when suddenly two terrific explosions occurred, shaking both North and South Shields to their very foundations. High into the air the water rose, and it was then seen that two submarine mines had been exploded simultaneously by electric current from the Tynemouth Battery, and that both vessels had been completely blown up. Such was the force of the explosion, that the hull of the _Neptune_, a great armour-clad of over ten thousand tons, had been ripped up like paper, and of her crew scarcely a man escaped, while the cruiser had been completely broken in half, and many of her crew blown to atoms. Scarcely had this success of the defenders been realised when it was followed by another, for a second later a British torpedo boat succeeded in blowing up with all hands the French torpedo gunboat _Lance_. These reverses, however, caused but little dismay among the invaders, for ere long the British cruisers had been driven off, the guns at Trow had been silenced, while those at Spanish Battery and Tynemouth could only keep up a desultory fire. Then, in the falling gloom, ship after ship, guided by foreign pilots, and carefully evading a number of hulks that had been placed near the estuary, entered the Tyne, pouring forth their heavy monotonous fire into North Shields and South Shields. Skilfully as the despairing defenders managed their submarine mines, they only succeeded in destroying three more of the enemy's ships, the French torpedo gunboats _Iberville_ and _Cassini_ and the cruiser _Desaix_, the crews perishing. Not for a moment was there a cessation of the cannonade as the smaller ships of the enemy advanced up the river, and the damage wrought by their shells was enormous. Tynemouth had already suffered heavily, many of the streets being in flames. The tower of St. Saviour's Church had fallen, the conspicuous spire of the Congregational Chapel had been shot away, the Piers Office had been reduced to ruins, and the long building of the Royal Hotel completely wrecked. The houses facing Percy Park had in many cases been shattered, a shell exploding under the archway of the Bath Hotel had demolished it, and the handsome clock tower at the end of the road had been hurled down and scattered.