CO129-094 - Acting Governor Mercer - 1863 [11-10] — Page 248

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counted and thirty-eight discovered to be missing. Drags were used but no wire recovered on the bodies of the accident.

Bodies were recovered in the evening.

On the twenty-fourth, twenty-four were found, all being those of the thirty-six dead bodies. The Coroner's Jury viewed the thirty-six dead bodies on the evening of the 24th; two prisoners were missing.

I believe that they were drowned at the time the boat upset. The truth is, nine was swirling about sixty feet from the nearest point of Somcutter's Island, from which the prisoners had embarked; the depth of water around the boat was about twenty-six feet.

The length of the boat in which the prisoners were carried off, and which upset, is thirty feet - it has three beams and is 3 feet 6 inches deep to the bilge; there is a floor about six inches above the keelson. The usual number of prisoners brought off in this boat was between fifty and sixty.

I do not know of any order directing what number shall be on board. I have frequently placed as many as eighty prisoners in the boat, both when landing and coming on board. I know that on one occasion, there were eighty prisoners in the boat, several days before the accident.