It is a curious thing to find a wreck due,
not to the ship striking a rock, but to a rock striking the ship, yet this is what seems to have happened in the case of the iron screw steamer Knight Templar,' which, on February 23, off the Gulf of Tunis, seems to have been struck by a rock from a submarine volcano, while in 1,000 fathoms of water at a distance of ten miles from the nearest known group of rocks. The shock was accompanied by a rumbling noise and by a seething of the sea into white foam all round the ship, and though the ship was not stopped in her course, she soon began to fill, and had to be steered to the island of Galita, where the captain ran her on shore in a shallow place, which he accomplished within four hours of the submarine shock. When examined by divers, and subsequently in dock in Malta, it appeared that at a distance of about fifteen feet from the stem of the vessel some nine or ten feet had been torn out of her by something which crossed her course at right angles, and the ship had also been struck in a similar way on the after-part from the same direction, and a good part of her keel twisted. Mr. William Coppin, ex- surveyor to the Board of Trade, who gives us this account at length in Monday's Times, is evidently quite satisfied that a rock driven through the sea by a submarine volcano had struck and wrecked the ship. It is hard for the sailors that at the very time when man is contriving such frightful torpedoes for their destruc- tion, the earth herself should begin exploding natural torpedoes upon them, without even the warning of a declaration of war.
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