New York City, like all large cities, has experienced a number of riots in its long history. But the Draft Riots of 1863 surpassed every other upheaval, before or since, in unadulterated ferocity.
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It is at moments of unremitting extremity that we discover our true natures. The tragic loss of the British ship Stella in 1899 provides an illustration of this principle. The story appears in a 1962 volume of nautical lore entitled Women of the Sea by the maritime writer Edward R. Snow; but since the book has long been out of print, it will be retold here in abbreviated form, with Mr. Snow’s account as my primary source.
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Let us tell the story of the greatest speech ever delivered by an American president.
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No one should doubt the extraordinarily destructive power of lightning. A dramatic illustration of this power occurred in 1830, when the packet ship Boston was hit by a bolt of lightning in the Atlantic and burned to the waterline, with the loss of one unfortunate passenger.
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The French naval officer and explorer Antoine Bruni d’Entrecasteaux was born at Aix-en-Provence in 1739. He enlisted in the French Navy in 1754; but he must have shown promise to his superiors, for they granted him an officer’s commission two years later.
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The following story is found within the pages of an 1840 volume entitled The Book of Shipwrecks and Narratives of Maritime Discoveries and the Most Popular Voyages. The narrator of the tale, as seems to have been the custom in those days when relating first-hand accounts, has omitted some specific details, such as the ship’s name, the dates, and the identities of major protagonists.
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This incredible story is found in the pages of The Book of Shipwrecks, Narratives of Maritime Discoveries, and the Most Popular Voyages, which was published in Boston in 1840. I relate it as it is described therein. Specific dates and names have been omitted, not by myself, but by the original author, who was a witness to the events. This discretion seems to be consistent with the regular practice of the era.
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We will relate the terrible loss of the ship Kent, which sailed from the Downs on February 19, 1825. As a so-called East Indiaman (a merchant vessel trading with the East Indies), the Kent was bound for Bengal in India, and then China. She was a ship of 1,350 tons, and aboard her were 344 soldiers, 20 officers, 43 women, 66 children, 20 civilian passengers, and a crew of 148 men. The sum of these numbers comes to a total of 641.
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In the 1998 film Fallen, one of the characters intones an ominous motto: “What goes around, really goes around.” This is a more emphatic version of the old adage, “What comes around, goes around.” In both cases the meaning is the same: he who spreads iniquity and evil, will eventually be himself visited by iniquities and evils of even greater magnitude.
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We often underestimate the ease with which terrible disasters can accompany our efforts and enterprises. Vigilance tends to lapse with routine; and with time, even the most dangerous cargoes may begin to look benign. Any nation wishing to handle nuclear materials enters a kind of pact with the devil: in return for power and prestige, it can never forget what it is dealing with, and it can never let its guard down. Two lines from the Roman poet Lucan (Pharsalia IX.1020) expresses this idea well:
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Quintus Curtius 
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