That feat, performed a good many years ago, was equalled by Commander Cunningham of the Salvage and Towage Company when the Furness Withy steamer _Norton_ ran ashore on Zogria Island off the coast of Greece a year or two ago. The rocks threatened to tear the whole bottom out of the ship if an attempt were made to tow her off, so the salvage expert, seeing there was no other way back to the sea, decided to blow the age-old rocks from beneath the bilges of the steamer. He set to work, and, using extraordinary judgment in placing the dynamite and gauging the power of the charges, succeeded in eight strenuous days in pulverizing the imprisoning rocks without doing any further injury to the steamer. At the top of the tide the tugs and salvage craft towed her into deep water and finally took her to port. She was a rich prize, worth with her cargo some £330,000. The repairs to the steamer cost about £20,000, and the salvors by their fine work earned an award of £22,000. This seems a large sum for the salvors to make in so short a time, but it must be borne in mind that such prizes do not often come along, and the upkeep of a salvage steamer and her trained crew may easily run to £150 or more a week, without reckoning the cost of the steamer and plant, so it is plain that a big capital is required to keep a salvage unit in continual commission. In other words, although the award was good, taken in conjunction with the capital employed and the risk run, it was not by any means excessive. CHAPTER XIV A ship cast ashore always reminds me of a hospital ward and the men and women who are deprived by illness of the power to carry on the struggle of life. The ship, too, is a cripple, driven out of her element, unable to carry on the duties for which she was created, and this is why my curiosity in a case is always tinged with a little sadness. To the salvage expert, however, the beached ship is merely a problem, and his mind, like that of the physician, is wholly occupied in effecting a cure. If straightforward towing will not get the ship off, he will try other means. He may set a gang of men digging a deep trench round the keel of the vessel at low tide, and as the tide rises the water, flowing into this trench, will give her just enough buoyancy under her keel to enable the tugs to do the rest. Or he may try a trick that was tried very effectively on one occasion during the war when a whole convoy of ships grounded during a fog. The salvage officer, when his tugs failed to shift them, set torpedo boats thrashing round at a high speed and the wash they created lifted the grounded ships sufficiently for the tugs to get them off. It was a simple, yet clever, solution to the problem.