The first alternative may I think be discarded at once; the plates and ribs of an iron vessel are difficult enough to convert into useful materials for any other purposes, even in the midst of workshops and with tools and appliances at hand. In such a place as Dundrum Bay I do not believe the materials would pay the expense of cutting up; the masts, spars, chains, &c., in fact the stores and perhaps a few of the lighter part of the engines, might repay the cost of removal, but the whole would certainly not amount to many thousands; probably hundreds would be a safer estimate of the amount to be realised clear of all expenses. To remove the vessel and take her into port, and either restore her or sell her, is then the only means of recovering any part of the whole of the capital invested in this ship. If she is so brought into port she may be worth, unrepaired, 40,000_l._, 50,000_l._, or 60,000_l._, according to the opportunities that may offer themselves of employing her usefully or selling her. The only question is, then, how at the least expense, and at the smallest risk, is the vessel to be got into port? But, as I will now endeavour to prove to you, the mode of getting the vessel off the shore and into port is again quite secondary to the consideration of how to preserve her where she is so that she may be in a condition to be removed, _and to be worth removing_, when the means of doing this are ready, and the proper time is arrived for attempting it. In the first place I assert unhesitatingly, that no man in his senses and who thoroughly understands the circumstances of the case, the weight and position of the vessel, the amount of the rise and fall of the tide, and the draught of water around her, and the extraordinarily exposed situation, would dream of calculating upon completing the requisite means for floating her under three months.