One of the experiments performed for the entertainment and the instruction of the party was firing at a floating cask with bombs thrown by hand, a method of warfare since discontinued owing to the danger it involves to the person bombarding. When the cask exploded, a stave flew between the Prince and the general commanding at Portsmouth, Sir Hastings Doyle. Had it struck either of them he must have been killed. {154} The general's brother, Percy Doyle, a dear old gentleman well known in society, had very bad sight. I once saw him trying to eat a red mullet done up in paper. After a good deal of harpooning, he got it out, but put the paper in his mouth. We always told him he had swallowed the births, deaths, and marriages column of _The Times_. On Sunday the 24th of March, 1878 (the date of my engagement to Miss Gardner), the _Eurydice_, training frigate, capsized off the Isle of Wight in a sudden squall and sank. The total loss of life was about 300, only two being saved. She was on her way home from the West Indies. Coming under the Isle of Wight, she hauled her wind for Spithead, thus closing the land, so that it was impossible for the watch to see a squall coming up from windward. The captain, the Hon. Marcus A. S. Hare, was anxious to reach the harbour as soon as possible in order to give the men Sunday leisure. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when a sudden squall struck the ship, and she heeled over; the lee main-deck ports being open, according to custom, she took in a good deal of water, depressing her bows; so that instead of capsizing, she simply sailed straight to the bottom, her fore-foot being broken off with the force of the impact, and her topgallant masts remaining above the surface. There was no time to shorten sail. When she was raised it was found that only one rope, the mainroyal sheet, had carried away.