The enemy had then closed in to a range of about 1,500 yards; the survivors of the engine-room staff had come on deck and the captain ordered the collision-mats to be placed over the shot-holes, and every attempt to be made to plug them and keep the ship afloat. This was accordingly done under the direction of Lieutenant Ernest T. Donnell, the first lieutenant, who appears to have been still unwounded, and maintained a cheering spirit of indomitable pluck to the last. The coxswain, who had recovered consciousness, though half-blinded by blood from his wound, superintended a party who under the captain’s orders were turning out the boats and endeavouring to launch the rafts. The boats were smashed by shell-fire while still at the davits, but three rafts--two regulation life-saving rafts, and an extemporised affair of four barrels lashed together--were placed in the water. In the meanwhile the midship gun, under the command of Midshipman T. Smith, R.N.R., maintained a steady fire. The stock of percussion tubes threatened to run short at one time, and the gunner, Mr. W. Gale, though severely wounded, crawled down below and fetched a fresh supply, shortly after which he was killed. Leading Signalman Hodgetts, who had been previously working as one of the ammunition supply party, was blown overboard by the explosion of a shell; a few minutes later his dripping figure appeared over the rail, and he coolly resumed his work; by some curious freak of chance he was again blown overboard by the blast of a shell, but again he clambered back to his place of duty, and his death. The crew of the midship gun was ultimately reduced to two men, Able Seaman Howell, the gunlayer, and Able Seaman Hope. The midshipman trained the gun while Hope loaded and Howell fired. The captain stood beside the gun giving them the range, heartening the remnant of the crew by his example of cool courage. Howell, who had been severely wounded, eventually dropped from loss of blood, and the captain took his place. A moment later he was himself struck by a shell, which took off his right leg above the knee. He lay on the deck in the rear of the gun while the coxswain and a chief stoker, named Hammell, between them improvised a tourniquet from a piece of rope and fragment of wood. While they were endeavouring to stop the bleeding, Commander Loftus Jones, in the words of an eyewitness who survived, “gentleman and captain as he was,” continued to direct the firing of the gun.