LOSS OF LIFE BY SHIPWRECK.
Two of the most recent shipwrecks are at once striking departures from what has been considered the established rule in such cases to mitigate the calamity, and striking continuations of the ten- dency to increase recklessness. It has become customary to ex- rot from officers and men an absolute devotion to the saving of life so far as it is practicable ; and we have had many occasions to record the positive self-sacrifice of officers to save others, or even to prove to survivors that no chance of rescuing the helpless had been neglected. Ordinary appliances that might have been con- verted to the purposes of rescue have been neglected, or attended to only in form. In some cases—Mr. Cunard says it is so with his vessels—boats are provided with sufficient room to bear every passenger; and he has stated in the newspapers that there was enough boat-room in the Arctic to save many more persons than those who were on board. But, somehow, there was not sufficient time to get at the boats, or not sufficient discipline to make the men launch them within the given time. In the case of the Fore- runner, time was not so much the question; but there was neither discipline, it is said, nor boats.
So long as the officers and crew devoted themselves to the work of saving the passengers, or at least the more helpless, there was little disposition to treat this neglect of mechanical aids with severity. But we may remember that these two last and worst examples are not the first of their kind. We have before instances nstances of officers and men who abandoned ships and pas- sengers intrusted to them, even when the saving of the latter would not necessarily have entailed the loss of the mariners. When the Europa went down with so many soldiers on board, there were sailors, and even officers, who showed an undue im- patience to secure their own safety.
A. time really has come when a peremptory stop ought to be put to such occurrences so far as they can be prevented by forethought. In the first place, the owners of any vessel putting to sea without sufficient boat-accommodation ought to be rendered liable to such penalties as would make the neglect too great an expense for com- mercial men to encounter. The penalty ought to overbalance the insurance. Next, such arrangements ought to be settled, once for all, as will secure the best placing of boats in order to their prompt launching. Thirdly, every crew ought to be so drilled and prac- tised in the prompt launching of boats as to render the operation not less certain and regular in point of time than the firing of a gun. The obstacles that prevent us from realizing these rules, we, of course, do not know ; but they could be easily ascertained, and no subject appears to us so suitable for examination under proper authority as the causes and impediments which negatively produce these calamities at sea.
Under the same inquiry should come the subject of ship-con- struction with a reference to loss at sea. Much is evidently to be said in favour of iron ships, much in favour of wood ; but their relative merits have yet to be determined authoritatively. The use of water-tight bulkheads, simple and intelligible as it is, is often neglected, and has been on occasion adopted so purely as a matter of form that a hollow-keel has established a communica- tion between the different compartments, and has thus completely neutralized the advantages to be derived from that form of con- struction. It is a general rule in extreme cases of shipwreck, that it is safer to stick to the relics of the vessel than to float away from them. But is it impossible to adopt appliances which might secure the floating of a ship under any circumstances whatsoever? Would it, for example, be impracticable to apply the principle of in- flated floats to the ship itself, as well as to the passengers? For although it might be impossible to prevent a ship from sinking into the water, the vessel might ygt be retained floating level with the surface, and constitute a better kind of raft until succour could arrive—at least a standing-place for signals to attract notice. These are fit subjects for an inquiry, as a preliminary to estab- lishing peremptory rules in order to reduce the number of those shipwrecks that occur, not through misadventure, but through neglect and indiscipline.
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