3-065-821 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Raising a sunken Indiaman in the Thames, near Gravesend, 1874. 'Our Illustration shows the method which has been successfully adopted to raise the large East Indiaman accidentally sunk...[She] was going out with a full cargo on her voyage to Bombay, and lay at anchor waiting for the tide, when she was run into by a steamer, and went down in ten minutes, but happily no lives were lost. The agents of the Salvage Association and the officers of the Thames Conservancy Board have...[taken] effectual steps to lift her from the bottom, so as to save a valuable property and clear the channel for navigation. Two old naval hulks...were lent for the purpose by the Lords of the Admiralty. Divers were employed to pass twelve chains of the largest size beneath the hull of the sunk ship. The two hulks were then placed one on each side, and were chained down at low tide by the chains that lay under the submerged hull...when the tide rose, the two floating hulls rising lifted the sunk ship bodily upward...When raised well off the bottom, the vessel, still upheld by her two supporters, was towed into shallow water. There, by the tide again falling, she was left dry and safe, to be lightened of her cargo, and to be repaired or refitted, as need may require'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.