Masts, funnels and various cabins were cut off the upright deck to clear the vessel of all her top hamper. Then the salvors, toiling night and day, built enormously strong tripods out of huge baulks of timber on the quay. By the time these were finished, lifting vessels were brought on the spot and moored close to the overturned ship. Cables were taken from the lifting vessels down under the keel of the ship and attached to the visible upper side of the hull, so the lifting craft, in straining upward, would tend to pull her over. Other cables were made fast to the deck and carried across the tops of the tripods on the quay. [Illustration: FIVE RAILWAY ENGINES HAULING THE OVERTURNED TROOPSHIP UPRIGHT. THIS EXTRAORDINARY TUG OF WAR BETWEEN A WRECK AND RAILWAY LOCOMOTIVES IS UNIQUE IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD] Then came the touch of genius on the part of the Director of Salvage which makes the case unique. Five powerful railway locomotives steamed on to the quay and came to a stop by the sunken ship. The ends of the cables were made fast to the locomotives, and there followed one of the strangest tugs of war in the world between railway engines and a sunken ship. The five railway engines began to pull, and they pulled and hauled and strained away until they dragged the _Onward_ upright. Pumping out soon followed, and within a month the scuttled troopship was raised and in dry dock. It was a difficult and novel feat, admirably performed. [Illustration: PUMPING OUT THE SUNKEN TROOPSHIP IN ORDER TO RAISE HER AFTER SHE HAD BEEN PULLED UPRIGHT BY THE RAILWAY ENGINES] It was by no means the first overturned ship that Commodore Sir Frederick Young had dealt with, for some years ago he righted and raised H.M.S. _Gladiator_ after the _St. Paul_, of the American Line, had crashed into her during a blinding snowstorm on April 25, 1908, and sunk her in the Solent. The British Admiralty called in the assistance of the Liverpool Salvage Association, who sent Captain F. W. Young, as he was in those days, to deal with the case. Up to that time it was as gigantic a task as any one had ever undertaken. There the cruiser lay on her side, 6000 tons of dead weight, on the sandy bed of the Solent, a fifty-foot hole ripped in her hull, several of her boiler rooms exposed to the sea, her grey plates just showing above the water. The salvage expert was not a bit dismayed. He began to lighten the ship in every possible way. Her guns were taken out and salved. Then uncouth divers got busy with pneumatic chisels and cut off the funnels and ventilators and other deck fittings. Every hole in the deck was covered with wood and made watertight. Only the gash in her side, where the thick armour plates had folded down like tinfoil, was left open, and this in turn was dealt with by the divers, who carefully blasted away the ragged plates to prevent them from impeding the righting of the ship.