A SHIP ATTACKED BY A SWORD-FISH.

I have always been puzzled to imagine how the ‘nine-and-twenty knights of fame,’ described in the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ managed to ‘drink the red wine through the helmet barr’d.’ But in nature we meet with animals which seem almost as inconveniently armed as those chosen knights, who
. . . quitted not their armour bright,
Neither by day nor yet by night.

Amongst such animals the sword-fish must be recognised as one of the most uncomfortably-armed creatures in existence. The shark has to turn on his back before he can eat, and the attitude scarcely seems suggestive of a comfortable meal. But the sword-fish can hardly even by that arrangement get his awkwardly projecting snout out of the way. Yet doubtless this feature, which seems so inconvenient, is of great value to Xiphias. In some way as yet unknown it enables him to get his living. Whether he first kills some one of his neighbours with this instrument, and then eats him at his leisure, or whether he plunges it deep into257 the larger sort of fish, and attaching himself to them in this way, sucks nutriment from them while they are yet alive, is not known to naturalists. Certainly, he is fond of attacking whales, but this may result not so much from gastronomic tastes as from a natural antipathy—envy, perhaps, at their superior bulk. Unfortunately for himself, Xiphias, though cold-blooded, seems a somewhat warm-tempered animal; and, when he is angered, he makes a bull-like rush upon his foe, without always examining with due care whether he is likely to take anything by his motion. And when he happens to select for attack a stalwart ship, and to plunge his horny beak through thirteen or fourteen inches of planking, with perhaps a stout copper sheathing outside it, he is apt to find some little difficulty in retreating. The affair usually ends by his leaving his sword embedded in the side of the ship. In fact, no instance has ever been recorded of a sword-fish recovering his weapon (if I may use the expression) after making a lunge of this sort. Last Wednesday the Court of Common Pleas—rather a strange place, by-the-bye, for inquiring into the natural history of fishes—was engaged for several hours in trying to determine under what circumstances a sword-fish might be able to escape scot-free after thrusting his snout into the side of a ship, The gallant ship ‘Dreadnought,’ thoroughly repaired, and classed A 1 at Lloyd’s, had been insured for 3,000l. against all the risks of the seas. She sailed on March 10, 1864, from Colombo, for London. Three days later, the crew,258 while fishing, hooked a sword-fish. Xiphias, however, broke the line, and a few moments after leaped half out of the water, with the object, it would seem, of taking a look at his persecutor, the ‘Dreadnought.’ Probably he satisfied himself that the enemy was some abnormally large cetacean, which it was his natural duty to attack forthwith. Be this as it may, the attack was made, and at four o’clock the next morning the captain was awakened with the unwelcome intelligence that the ship had sprung a leak. She was taken back to Colombo, and thence to Cochin, where she was hove down. Near the keel was found a round hole, an inch in diameter, running completely through the copper sheathing and planking.

As attacks by sword-fish are included among sea risks, the insurance company was willing to pay the damages claimed by the owners of the ship, if only it could be proved that the hole had really been made by a sword-fish. No instance had ever been recorded in which a sword-fish had been able to withdraw his sword after attacking a ship. A defence was founded on the possibility that the hole had been made in some other way. Professor Owen and Mr. Frank Buckland gave their evidence; but neither of them could state quite positively whether a sword-fish which had passed its beak through three inches of stout planking could withdraw without the loss of its sword. Mr. Buckland said that fish have no power of ‘backing,’ and expressed his belief that he could hold a sword-fish by the beak; but then he admitted that the fish had considerable259 lateral power, and might so ‘wriggle its sword out of a hole.’ And so the insurance company will have to pay nearly six hundred pounds because an ill-tempered fish objected to be hooked, and took its revenge by running full tilt against copper sheathing and oak planking.

(From the Daily News, December 11, 1868.)