they had already spoken , of course , from necessity , in those first distracted hours , all the officers united in the effort to make some sense of seven dragons , wailing children , wounded men , several hundred inconvenient passengers , and all the confusion which might be expected on a ship three times the size of a first-rate , launched with no preparation directly into a brutal headwind , with a lee-shore ready to receive her at any time , and her deck still littered with the large metal-shod stones which had served the enemy for missiles .