Among the loveliest groups are the beautiful Virgin Isles, and loveliest of these is the famed island of St. Thomas. A lofty mountain girdles the island, leaving an opening between two hills into a wide oval harbor, while the pretty little town lies around the inner side of the port, sloping up the mountain behind, the queen of a vast natural amphitheater. Such a fine harbor has rendered St. Thomas almost the mistress of West Indian commerce; and one would not suspect, in looking at the sunny slopes and green-clad ranges around the azure harbor, that in this region is the birthplace of the Storm King. Yet, not a spot on earth has been more frequently visited by great cyclones.

One of the most notable of its visitations during this century occurred August 2, 1837. The barometer fell rapidly during the forenoon, and by noon the storm began. In a short time it increased to a tremendous gale. At about three o’clock, the wind suddenly ceased. In a few moments it blew from the other direction, roaring and rolling black clouds before it, raising up immense sea-waves, covering the island with intense gloom. Six hours it blew, ever increasing. Tiles and slates whizzed through the air, to be shattered on the rocks or driven into timbers: great trees were whirled about, often dashing away houses that seemed about to weather the storm, while the terrible roar of the wind was such that even the crash of the thunder could hardly be distinguished. One authority tells us that the great guns at the fort were blown through the air and tossed about the beach like chaff! This must be taken with allowance. It is more probable that the great guns on the beach were washed up from the wrecks of some old pirate vessels or ships of war.

About 10 P.M. there was a slight cessation of the storm, and the people were congratulating themselves that the worst was over, when there came a violent earthquake, which laid in ruins almost everything that was left. The wreck took fire in two or three places: at once the hurricane began with renewed vigor: and ere the wretched people had fully comprehended the magnitude of the calamity, the whole ruined town was a sea of flame. Buffeted by the wind, blinded by the smoke and the pelting spray whirled up from the raging sea, the people ran for the slopes of the hills: the light of the funeral pyre of their hopes and labors rendering the gloom more horrible, and seeming to rival the gleams of Tartarus.

Day broke at last. The storm was gone. The earthquake staggered the miserable folk no longer. The warm and brilliant sun of the West Indies smiled upon the scene. “The whole country round was strewn with large trees, uprooted or snapped off, and all plantations were destroyed. In the town the fire was dying out, and it was only here and there that the ruins were still smoking. The hurricane had swept away nearly all the wooden houses; those which had been lightly placed upon beams, just above the soil, being carried off as they stood, while the larger ones, which had resisted the hurricane, were overturned in an instant by the earthquake. The whole town was strewn with wrecks that told of the violence of the catastrophe. The port, so gay and animated the day before, was dreary and deserted, a few masts here and there emerging from the water: while all along the shore, and even upon the slope of the hills, were scattered wreckage and corpses of sailors.”

While we have noticed only the destruction wrought at

St. Thomas, this storm was general throughout the Antilles. In the Bahamas, it was less violent, they lying on the outskirts of the storm. Millions of dollars worth of property—merchandise, vegetation, houses, and vessels—were destroyed, and thousands of lives lost.

Thirty years later, St. Thomas again suffered from the combined forces of storm and earthquake; and the damage was greater, because the earthquake, with its sea-wave, came a few days after the storm, as the work of restoration was well under way, and so involved a second prostration of the resources of the people. Moreover, the town had grown considerably in thirty years, and there was much more valuable property to damage. Fifteen large steamers and many smaller vessels were driven on the shore by the storm: while the sea-wave, a few days later, found the port again filled with vessels of different nations. It overleaped the sentinel hills at the entrance of the bay, and swept with tremendous force upon the city, drowning with its terrible roar, the despairing cry of the sailors; then suddenly retired with the wreck of the city to its dark abyss. The batteries of heavy guns at the entrance of the harbor were swept away. A few injured vessels wallowed on the waves, but most had been swallowed up and left no trace behind.

While there is always deep sympathy for those who suffer such calamities, yet it must remain of the type bestowed upon sufferers in Arctic expeditions. The character of the climate is well known, and the whole matter resolves itself into a question of the risk one is willing to run. There is no blind chance in control of these movements. The cyclone frequents only certain regions, and its habit and power is understood. While we pity the sufferers, we can not assert that the scourge is mysterious or unaccountable, any more than we find mystery in the fact of eternal snow in the Polar world.

But there have been storms in the West Indies far more destructive than either of these, or both together. One of the most noted of the century is the famous Barbadoes storm of 1831, which an eye-witness thus describes:

“On the morning of the 10th of August, the sun arose without a cloud; at 10 A.M. a breeze that had been blowing, died away; towards 2 P.M. the heat became oppressive; at 5 P.M. thick clouds appeared in the north, rain fell, and was succeeded by a sudden stillness and a dismal blackness all around except towards the zenith, where there was an obscure circle of imperfect light. Till 10:30 P.M., however, there was no sign of change; then lightning appeared in the north, and very unusual fluctuations of the thermometer were observed. All this time the storm was only approaching.

“After midnight the continued flashing of the lightning was awfully grand, and a gale blew fiercely from the north and northeast, but at 1 A.M., on the 11th of August, the tempestuous rage of the wind increased as the storm suddenly shifted and burst from the northwest and immediate points. The upper regions were illuminated by incessant lightning, but the quivering sheet of blaze was surpassed in brilliancy by the darts of electric fire which exploded in every direction. At a little after 2 A.M. the astounding roar of the hurricane can not be described by language.

“About three o’clock the wind abated and the lightning ceased for a few moments at a time, when the blackness in which the town was enveloped was inexpressibly awful. Fiery meteors were presently seen falling from the heavens; one in particular of a globular form and a deep-red hue, was observed by the writer to descend perpendicularly from a vast height. On approaching the earth it assumed a dazzling whiteness and an elongated form, and on reaching the ground splashed around in the same manner as melted metal would have done, and was instantly extinct.” (It is evident that the coincidence on this occasion with the day on which the earth is known to pass through the August belt of meteors, rendered the effect of this great storm at Barbadoes more striking. It is not safe to assert that there was any relation between the phenomena.) “A few minutes after, the deafening noise of the wind sank to a solemn murmur, or rather a distant roar; and the lightning which from midnight had flashed and darted forkedly with but few momentary intermissions, now for nearly half a minute played frightfully between the clouds and the earth with novel and surprising action. The vast body of vapor appeared to touch the houses, and issued downward flaming blazes, which were nimbly returned from the earth upward.

“The moment after this singular alteration of lightning the hurricane again burst forth from the western points with violence prodigious beyond description, hurling before it thousands of missiles, the fragments of every unsheltered structure of human art. The strongest houses were caused to vibrate from their foundations, and the surface of the very earth trembled as the destroyer raged over it. No thunder was at any time distinctly heard. The horrible roar and yelling of the wind; the noise of the ocean, whose frightful waves threatened the town with the destruction of all that the other elements might spare; the clattering of tiles, the falling of floors, and walls, and the combination of a thousand other sounds, formed a hideous and appalling din.

“About 5 A.M. the storm abated; at six o’clock the wind was at south, at seven o’clock, southeast, at eight o’clock, east-southeast; and at nine o’clock, the weather was clear.

“The view from the summit of the cathedral tower, a few hours later, was frightfully grand. The whole face of the country was laid waste; no sign of vegetation was apparent, except here and there small patches of sickly green. The surface of the ground appeared as if fire had run through the land, scorching and burning up the productions of the earth. The few remaining trees, stripped of their boughs and foliage, wore a cold and wintry aspect; and the numerous seats in the environs of Bridgetown, formerly concealed among thick groves, were now exposed and in ruins.”

One peculiarity noticeable, was that in some places trees, timbers, and many other objects, presented a scorched appearance, as though subjected to intense heat. The reason of this is not clear, as unusual heat was not perceptible after the beginning of the storm by any one. It may be that this was produced by unusual quantities of electricity escaping through imperfect conductors, for we learn, from other phenomena, that during this storm there was an unusual state of electrical tension in the atmosphere. Sparks occasionally leaped from the heads of persons out of doors. Vast numbers of trees that were not blown down, speedily died: and it has been suggested that an excess of electricity killed them.

The total loss in this storm is not definitely known. Some further idea of its fearful violence may be gathered from the fact that at the north end of Barbadoes, the waves broke over a cliff seventy feet high, and the saltwater spray was carried inland in such quantities as to kill all the fresh-water fish in ponds far in the interior. As for the tremendous roar of the wind, the commanding officer of the thirty-sixth regiment sought protection by getting under the arch of a lower window outside his house. He did not hear the roof and upper story of the house fall, and only found it out by the dust caused by the fall.

Far more destructive was the great hurricane of 1780.

The French and English were at war. Admiral George Rodney was in the West Indies with an English fleet in several divisions. The French had sent a convoy of five thousand troops to Martinique. The storm was of immense width, extending from Trinidad, on the extreme southwest, to Antigua. The evening of October 9th was red and lowering. By ten o’clock next morning, the wind was high, and by one o’clock, vessels in the harbors were dragging their anchors. The water was driven on shore with such force at Barbadoes, that it was four feet deep in the Government House. The family took refuge under the cannon, only to find that they were moved about by the wind. By morning not a building in town was standing; every tree was either blown away, or stripped of branches and leaves.

The sunny islands were suddenly become as bleak and bare as a Siberian steppe.

As to the loss, ten thousand perished at Martinique; six thousand at Santa Lucia; four thousand five hundred at St. Eustatia; three thousand five hundred at Barbadoes. Scores of smaller islands were devastated, but the loss in detail is not known. Of the British fleet, the greater part was destroyed; only one vessel out of nineteen at St. Eustatia survived. A score of other ships of war and numerous transports were sunk. Of the French convoy, with five thousand troops, the governor wrote laconically that it “had disappeared.” Several English vessels at Barbadoes were carried far in shore and converted into dwellings. Doubtless, fifty thousand would hardly be too great an estimate of the total loss of life in this storm. In a similar one in 1813, the hurricane drove back the Gulf Stream, piling up the water thirty feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico. The ship Ledbury Snow, endeavored to ride out the storm, and when it was over, found herself high and dry. She had let go her anchor among the tree-tops of Elliot’s Key. The Barbadoes region suffered another severe gale in 1782, when the prizes captured by Admiral Rodney were sunk, a number of merchant vessels and two English war-ships foundered, and three thousand lives were lost at sea alone.

The temperate zone has its occasional hurricanes, though they are by no means as powerful or as frequent as those of the tropics. It is stated that in the year 944, one thousand five hundred houses were destroyed by a tempest in London. In the year 1090, it is recorded that a violent storm overturned six hundred and six houses in London alone.

Terrible as is the destruction of the cyclone in the western world, its fury here can not give a fair idea of the awful havoc it makes in Oriental regions. All through the Malay archipelago, along the coasts of China, Japan, the Phillipines, Hindostan, and Farther India, the ravages of the Storm King have been appalling, far exceeding even the terrible hurricanes of the West Indies.

Hindostan affords peculiar facilities for destructiveness of cyclones. Both its great rivers flow, for the latter part of their course, through low alluvial plains, and their deltas extend into the ocean directly toward the region of monsoons; so that a hurricane may send a great tidal wave up the river: while the low rich plains for miles around are but few feet above tide-water, and teem with a population attracted by the amazing fertility. So a sudden great storm may totally submerge, without any warning, hundreds of square miles of these fertile tracts, with all their inhabitants. Even when the sea-wave is not added to the horrors of the storm, the losses are fearful. A cyclone at Calcutta in 1867, destroyed thirty thousand houses, wrecked or sunk six hundred ships and smaller vessels in the river, and killed ten thousand persons in the city alone. When to this is added the havoc committed by the storm—one hundred miles wide—in the rural districts, as it traveled on toward the foot-hills, it is clear that every reader may be devoutly thankful that such terrible visitants are altogether unknown in our land.

Terrible as this storm was, there was a greater one on the 5th of October, 1864. About one hundred ships were lost; and over sixty thousand persons perished; forty-three thousand in Calcutta alone. It was accompanied by a “bore” on the Hooghly, the water rising thirty feet, which is ten feet higher than the highest spring tides; whole towns were nearly destroyed. It indicated its approach for several days, and Capt. Watson, of the Clarence, seeing the barometer falling, knew a cyclone was approaching, and saved his ship by steering out of its range.

Compare this with the storms of our own land, that thrill the country with horror if but one hundred people are killed, and remember that the cyclone of India destroyed six hundred lives where one was destroyed in this region. Compare with the most terrible storms recorded in the West Indies, and the latter must yield.

Coringa, on the Coromandel coast, has been several times desolated by these terrible storm waves. In December, 1789, three immense rollers came ashore during a single storm; the town was destroyed; the neighboring country inundated. Ships were torn from their anchorage and thrown high on the land: twenty thousand people were lost; and the heaps of sand and mud rendered search for bodies and property useless.

In May, 1833, the region at the mouth of the Hooghly was inundated by a cyclone. Three hundred villages and fifty thousand people were destroyed. In June, 1822, Burisal and Backergunge, at the mouth of the Ganges, were overwhelmed, and fifty thousand persons drowned.

But Hindostan has far greater horrors to report. A terrible flood in 1887 was driven by the cyclone over the Ganges delta. The victims numbered many thousands: exact figures not at hand. But in 1876, a cyclone swept the Backergunge district, and rolled in a storm wave over the eastern edge of the fertile delta, covering it with from ten to fifty feet of water. When the storm had subsided, it was found that more than one hundred thousand people had perished!

Finally, a great cyclone in 1737, October 11-12, swept the Ganges delta with a wave thirty feet deep on the land. Three hundred thousand people perished in this storm! The mind can not grasp the appalling magnitude of such a disaster.

These cases are the most destructive cyclones on record, and in each case the destruction is due largely to the character of the region traversed, though the winds of Bengal are not surpassed in violence by those of any country in the world. Were the harbor an open seaport, instead of a large river, no ship could live through such a storm.

Other regions in the east suffer much from tempests. The whole Malay archipelago, with the Moluccas and Philippines, are visited quite as frequently as the coasts of Hindostan. A cyclone that swept the Philippine Islands, November 6, 1885, destroyed ten thousand people, and millions of dollars worth of property.

The same character of storms is frequently met with in the Japan and China seas, where it is known as the “typhoon,” our Anglicised spelling of the Chinese title, “tei-fun.” With one example of the power of this storm, this chapter must close. In the narrative of Commander Hall, of the British Navy, is found this description of a typhoon that occurred at Hong Kong, July 21-22, 1841:

“For days previously large black clouds appeared to

settle on the hills on either side; the atmosphere was extremely sultry and oppressive, and the most vivid lightning shot incessantly along the dense threatening clouds, and looked more brilliant, because the phenomena were most remarkable at night; while during the day, the threatening appearances were moderated considerably, and sometimes almost entirely disappeared. The vibrations of the mercury in the barometer were constant and rapid, and though it occasionally rose, still the improvement was only temporary; a storm was therefore confidently predicted. Between seven and eight o’clock in the morning, the wind was blowing very hard from the northward, or directly upon the shores of Hong Kong, and continued to increase in heavy squalls hour after hour. Ships were beginning to drive, and the work of destruction had commenced on every side; the Chinese junks and boats were blown about in all directions, and one of them was seen to founder with all hands on board. The fine basin of Hong Kong was gradually covered with scattered wrecks of the war of elements; planks, spars, broken boats, and human beings clinging hopelessly for succor to every treacherous log, were tossed about on every side; the wind howled and tore everything away before it, literally sweeping the face of the waters. From half-past ten to half-past two the hurricane was at its highest, the barometer at this time having descended to 28.50. The air was filled with spray and salt, so that it was impossible to see anything that was not close at hand; the wind roared and howled fearfully, so that it was impossible to hear a word that was said. Ships were now drifting foul of each other in all directions, masts were being cut away, and from the strength of the wind forcing the sea high upon the shore, several ships were driven high and dry. The Chinese were all distracted, imploring their gods in vain for help; such an awful scene of destruction and ruin is rarely witnessed, and almost every one was so busy in thinking of his own safety, as to be unable to render assistance to any one else. Hundreds of Chinese were drowned, and occasionally a whole family, children and all, floated past the ships, clinging in apparent apathy (perhaps under the influence of opium) to the last remnants of their shattered boats, which soon tumbled to pieces and left them to their fate. On the 26th another typhoon occurred, but not so severe as the first.”

The storm at sea presents a class of peculiar dangers and a variety of thrilling experiences, such as the landsman never knows. The stories of great shipwrecks and other purely naval disasters form some of the most interesting narratives in history: and doubtless the reader will be pleased to notice in detail the perils of the deep, and to learn of the precautions taken and the means in common use for averting, as far as possible, the disastrous results of the tempest. Certainly, the brave tars who peril their lives on the ocean to bring us the luxuries of a foreign land deserve especial attention, and no apology need be given for devoting a portion of this volume to the story of their perils and daring.

CHAPTER IX.

PERILS OF THE SEA.

The sea has dangers peculiarly its own, and likewise charms possessed by nothing else in nature. Every one may have heard of the little earnest woman who at her first sight of the ocean sighed: “Ah—at last here is something there is enough of!” The sailor knows the ocean’s every mood, and may sing with Barry Cornwall:

Or if his mind be better adapted for homelier ditties, he may hum:

Or if becalmed, and forced for days to lie beneath a scorching tropical sun,

the inevitable dreariness of the wide waste of scarcely heaving water will oppress the mind till the sailor may murmur:

It is beyond dispute that the sea has been one of the most important factors in civilizations ancient and modern. Greece was no longer supreme in power when her naval supremacy was gone; Rome was not mistress of the world till she became mistress of the Mediterranean. Not a single great system of civilization has originated in districts far inland. The great centers—Greece, Rome, Asia Minor, Egypt, Spain, England—all that have wielded unusual power—are sea-coasts, peninsulas or islands. The Jew became prominent as a trader from the day Jewish vessels sailed from Tarshish. To some extent, these facts must be considered as results of position only, however powerful the tendencies or traits of any particular stock.

It is not merely as a highway for commerce and ready intercommunication that the seas have enriched mankind. The submarine world presents views as strange and weirdly beautiful as the ancient myths of nymphs and naiads.

And thousands of the human race depend entirely upon the products of the sea for a livelihood. The fish taken as food would be an enormous item in any year: but the billows that surge over the deep conceal far more treasure than these.

All our pearls, nearly all our amber, sponges, and as beautiful and delicate as spun glass, corals of infinite number and variety—all these, and more, we must obtain from the depths of the sea. Yet, while eagerness for gain leads men to brave countless perils to obtain these treasures, thousands of sad hearts will deem them dearly bought, and recall the more precious treasures of the deep.

Like the atmosphere, the ocean has its great constant currents, which play an important part in the economy of nature. These flow steadily on, one beneath another, and are little affected by atmospheric disturbances. The presence of submarine currents is often shown by icebergs moving steadily onward against a surface current and moderate wind. But there is nothing in the sea, so far as known, that corresponds to the variable winds or local currents of the atmosphere: for as water is so much heavier than air, its equilibrium is not so easily disturbed by unusual heating: and moreover, it does not expand under the influence of heat to an extent in the least approaching the expansion of the air. Hence, its currents are steady and slow-moving, and, however much they affect climate and winds by the heating or cooling of the air above them, they offer no obstacle worthy of note to the sailor. The latter must then fear only the power of the storm: and were submarine vessels readily constructed and navigated, the storm would lose its terrors: for

It should be said, however, that the sea and storm are not responsible for all the disasters at sea. For years the greatest losses of life and property were due to the greed of conscienceless owners, who sent rotten tubs to sea, fearfully overloaded and heavily insured, certain to make a good profit whether they perished or no. As for the sailors, they were not worth considering: there were plenty to be obtained. Human life is the cheapest commodity in any market. By a liberal spending of this currency men become Alexanders or Cæsars, or Sullas, or Marii: henceforth they are “Great.”

These abuses were especially prevalent in England, the greatest of maritime powers; nor were they corrected till Mr. Samuel Plimsoll, in 1870, began a series of earnest efforts to have a systematic inspection organized. He made a startling arraignment of the atrocious methods of the land-sharks. He wrote, in 1873, “No means are neglected by Parliament to provide for the safety of life ashore; and yet, as I said before, you may build a ship in any way you please, you may use timber utterly unfit, you may use it in quantity utterly inadequate, but no one has any authority to interfere with you.

“You may even buy an old ship two hundred and fifty tons burden by auction for £50, sold to be broken up, because extremely old and rotten; she had a narrow escape on her last voyage, and had suffered so severely that she was quite unfit to go to sea again without more being spent in repairs upon her than she would be worth when done. Instead of breaking up this old ship, bought for 4s. per ton (the cost of a new ship being from £10 to £14 per ton), as was expected, you may give her a coat of paint—she is too rotten for caulking—and to the dismay of her late owners, you may prepare to send her to sea. You may be remonstrated with, in the strongest terms, against doing so, even to being told that if you persist, and the men are lost, you deserve to be tried for manslaughter.

“You may engage men in another port, and they, having signed articles without seeing the ship, you may send them to the port where the ship lies in the custody of a mariner. You may then (after re-christening the ship, which ought not to be allowed), if you have managed to insure her heavily, load her until the main deck is within two feet of the water amidships, and send her to sea. Nobody can prevent you. Nay, more, if the men become riotous, you may arrest them without a magistrate’s warrant, and take them to prison, and the magistrates, who have no choice (they have not to make, but only to administer the law), will commit them to prison for twelve weeks with hard labor; or better still for you, you may send a policeman on board to overawe the mutineers, and induce them to do their duty! And then, if the ship is lost with all hands, you will gain a large sum of money and you will be asked no questions, as no inquiry will ever be held over those unfortunate men, unless (which has only happened once, I think), some member of the House asks for inquiry.

“The river policeman who in one case threatened a refractory crew with imprisonment, and urged them to do their duty (!) told me afterwards (when they were all drowned) that he and his colleagues at the river-side station had spoken to each other about the ship being dreadfully overloaded as she passed their station on the river, before he went on board to urge duty (!) and that he then, when he saw me, ’rued badly that he had not locked ’em up without talk, as then they wouldn’t have been drowned.’ ”

He also found that some ship-builders put together mere floating coffins, using “devils,” or dummy bolts, or bolt-heads without any shaft, to present the appearance of a staunchly built vessel. The old shell would founder in the first strong breeze. Hundreds of examples came in his way of entire crews lost in these hulks. What such losses meant to the poor dependent families at home we may imagine, but may not readily portray.

Another prolific source of disaster was the neglect to supply captains with the proper charts. There are notable instances of great vessels so lost. One ship and cargo, value $350,000, was lost near Boulogne, because the captain’s chart had not the lights properly marked on it.

The great steamer Deutschland, having a large number

of German emigrants on board, ran on an unmarked shoal near the mouth of the Thames, December 30, 1875, and was lost. The vessel was fourteen hours on the shoal in the winter storm, ere her signals of distress were perceived. Fifty-seven of her passengers had been lost in the heavy sea ere help reached her.

Ship after ship has left her port, never to be heard of again, whose crews might have still been in peace and comfort with their families, had the owners had the least trace of humanity, or regard for simple justice. A single example will illustrate.

In a hovel, Plimsoll found a young wife, scrubbing for a living, trying to support herself and three children. “She had a loving husband but very lately, but the owner of the ship on which he served, the S——n, was a very needy man, who insured her for £3,000 more than she had cost him. So if she sank he would gain all this. Well, one voyage she was loaded under the owner’s personal superintendence; she was loaded so deeply that the dockmaster pointed her out to a friend as she left the dock, and said emphatically, ‘That ship will never reach her destination.’ She never did, for she was lost with all hands—twenty men and boys.”

Under the owner’s personal superintendence! Could cool calculating villany go any further? Yet this is but one out of many scores!

Yet, despite the apparent frequency of complaints from those who suffered most by these practices, the abuses had grown up so gradually that the masses of the people had come to accept them as almost a necessary concomitant of naval matters. While holding out stoutly for the difference of a penny more or less in wages, there was no effort at concerted action for better treatment. Men accustomed to risking their lives daily came to look upon the matter as of no great consequence. Only the worst possible vessels were very seriously objected to; and these usually had little difficulty in obtaining crews of men long out of employment, who would accept any risk rather than remain a burden to their friends and families, however the latter might object to the proceeding. So thousands went to a watery grave. Official records of the period showed that one-half the losses at sea were the result of sending out rotten hulks. Yet, when reforms were suggested, the promoters were frequently told that if such things did not properly regulate themselves as a matter of political economy, there was no use striving for a change. Cool weighing of human life against gold!

Even in staunch ships the accommodations provided for the sailors were of the meanest sort. Men might wade to their bunks through water, or be packed in a filthy forecastle like herrings; they were fed on “salt horse” and moldy biscuit; they might rot with scurvy—if the ship got to port with her cargo, it made little difference how the crew fared.

Our own ships and the Russian and French vessels the investigator found far superior in treatment of the sailor: and the majority of English owners did well by their crews; but Plimsoll’s efforts induced great improvement. Compulsory survey and no overloading were his main remedies for the prevention of the terrible loss of life in the mercantile marine. He cites two cases of great firms—the first engaged in the coal carrying, and the second in the guano trade—who do not permit overloading, and the first, in fifteen years had not, out of a large fleet of steamers, lost a single vessel, although they made from fifty to seventy double trips per year. The second case deserves particular mention. About the year 1860, the firm of Anthony Gibbs & Co., of London, took a contract from the Peruvian Government to charter and load ships from the Chincha Islands with guano, and as many as three or four hundred ships left those islands annually for different parts of the world. At first they were allowed to load and proceed to sea without inspection or surveying, and were permitted to load as deeply as the masters thought fit. What was the result? Accidents and losses were reported every few days, and many of their ships foundered at sea, some with all hands on board. When the head of the house at Lima, Peru, introduced proper surveying before loading, to discover what repairs were needed, etc., allowing no overloading, and not permitting the ships to go to sea without full inspection of her pumps and gear, a sudden and wonderful change took place, and for years after not one of these ships foundered at sea.

There is no sadder record than that which has been made of many a gallant vessel, sailing with the best prospects—“Missing,” or “Never heard of.” Occasionally the mysterious fate of some of these vessels has been revealed by the picking up of sealed bottles containing brief records of the disastrous end of the missing ships. But such cases are rare in comparison with the vast majority of the disasters; for the greatest peril to a vessel in a storm is the vicinity of a reef or shoal. In the open sea there is comparative safety, even in a considerable gale, for good seamen; but a shoal or rocky coast may be fatal to the vessel striking, even though the wind be but moderate. So nearly all disasters occur along shore; and the time is past in which it is possible for a vessel to be lost on an unknown or uninhabited coast. Hence, soon or late, the lot of nearly every vessel is known. Occasionally a vessel has been abandoned as unseaworthy or unmanageable, and has surprised those abandoning her by drifting around for months in the path of other vessels and occasionally fouling with some of them, to their serious injury.

The polar seas present peculiar perils to the navigator. Almost every one has heard of the ill-fated Franklin expedition, even though others may not be familiar. The attempts to find a northwest passage have long ceased, it being indisputable that it is useless though found. The great expeditions of later years have been equipped purely from a scientific standpoint. No conceivable benefit to commerce can result therefrom.

But the vast majority of fatalities in the polar seas have not been among the great exploring expeditions, any more than the majority of disasters in warmer climes are among first-class passenger steamers. The world over, it is the coasting vessels, the fishing smacks, the second and third-class freighters that swell the lists of losses at sea. And in the polar seas the most numerous disasters are among the whaling and sealing vessels, which visit the regions season after season. Many a vessel has been crushed like an egg-shell amid the enormous masses of ice. Often a vessel seemingly hopelessly imprisoned has been abandoned by the crew, only to be freed by some caprice of the winds and picked up by some other crew. And again there have been instances of vessels seen resting in masses of ice far above the water, raised by continual tilting and piling of ice-cakes beneath. Sometimes a vessel has floated about thus for a considerable period. Comparatively speaking, losses of life have been small in proportion to the dangers and property losses. Where so many vessels are in the same region at a time, the crew of a crushed ship can generally reach another vessel without great difficulty. But years ago, when the whaling fleet was smaller, and steam had not been called to the seaman’s aid, the peril of life was greater; and many is the vessel that sailed away never to be heard of again.

One of the best stories illustrating this class of dangers is that of the whaleship Rufus. A whaling vessel in 1774 found an abandoned ship; and on boarding her, found the crew scattered about in the postures assumed when they first yielded to the fatal sleep. The tale, in verse worth