Kent crossed the Second Bar on 16 November, reached St Helena on 7 February 1824, and arrived back at The Downs on 22 March.

By the roll of the vessel, a cask of spirits had been displaced; and, as the men were about to fix it in its former position, a heavy sea struck the ship, and precipitated a candle from the hands of one of them.

This, falling on a small portion of the spirits, which had escaped from the cask, produced an instant conflagration, which defied every effort to stay its progress.

At this awful crisis, the Cambria, Captain Cook, bound from London to Mexico, having on board thirty-five miners and superintendents of the Anglo-Mexican company, hove in sight.

The Cambria could not, as we are informed, have fallen in with the Kent, had not Captain Cook been induced to lie to for the purpose of repairing the bulwarks of his vessel.

It is also stated, that if the Cambria, on her return to Falmouth, had been detained by the wind a day or two longer, it must have occasioned deplorable discomfort on board his vessel, a brig of two hundred tons, with more than 600 souls crowded together in her cabin and on her deck.

[a] The crew and miners worked tirelessly to rescue survivors, fully cognizant of the risk that the Kent's magazine might explode at any time.

There were instances of men who tied the children of brother soldiers on their backs, and leaping overboard swam with their burdens to the boats.

In addition to William Daniell, artists that dealt with the tragedy included Théodore Gudin, Thomas Marie Madawaska Hemy (1874–1931), and an anonymous lithographer whose "Loss of the Kent" is in the National Maritime Museum, as are a number of other renditions.