Having got the foundation, on which, I may mention, we placed one of the ship’s iron life-boats, 30 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 5 feet deep, and loaded her with stones, and which also, although over bundles of fagots, went bodily down, until only the gunwale was above the level of the strand, we began to build the part which was to save the ship from the blows of the sea, and which I was instructed by Mr. Brunel to bring up to a point to the ship’s gunwale in the form of a large poultice, occupying the whole space under her counter, the whole of the exposed quarter (the port quarter), and inclining inwards from the outside, and declining from the top to the same point forward, to the after end of the bilge keel. I was to be, and was, as careful as I could be to secure as well as to weight down as we built. Chains were secured in many places to the lower bundles of fire-bars sunk in the sand outside all, and these were brought into the arms of the screw, and to ring bolts let into the ship; and rarely were two layers placed without a repetition of the securing and weighting process all the while we had chains to use.... We were frequently beaten; whole masses were capsized, but it was found that even the foundation broke the ground swell, which, instead of having a fair run as it has over the strand, seemed stopped, and to break differently; and certainly the ship was daily eased of the blows of the sea.... Finding the wind keeping on shore, the fagots we placed shrinking, sinking, or settling down, and, notwithstanding the weights and lashings, commonly breaking away, I proposed to try spars. Mr. Brunel acceded, and recommended my trying four long ones, to the heels of which were to be attached chains with a spread of eight feet, the spars being pointed at the heels, the slack of the chains, and the height at which they were stopped to the spars, being intended to be sufficient to embrace about a dozen bundles of fagots, the points of the spars sticking through the foundation below the level of the sand. After placing the first pair of spars at an angle from the gunwale of about 70 degrees, and before the second pair with its fagots could be got in place, and after heaving them down tight with a tackle to each from the head to the gunwale, a heavy sea came with the flood dead on, and although the spars were seven inches square, they stood the blows of the sea, bending in the middle full five feet when heavily struck. This gave me the idea of green trees: firs being the first that occurred to me; first because of their height, and next because in Lord Downshire’s grounds at Dundrum the castle wood consisted of them only, and lastly, because they were cheap and at hand. The spars we fortunately placed, and which stood so well,