CONSORT SHIPS. [To TRD EDITOR. or TUN " SPROTATOR:] you
allow me to draw attention to a very simple expedient by which the safety of the travelling public on the high sea can be better secured than by any number of additional lifeboats or unsinkable rafts? I refer to a plan, commonly enough adopted in the Royal Navy, of arranging for ships to consort upon a voyage. In some cases it would probably be good business policy to send two ships of moderato capacity instead of one monster ship upon a voyage across the Atlantic, for example. But the idea could equally well be carried out in another way. A tender ship of a thousand tons burden could have taken -off the whole ship's company from the foundering Titanic,' and without difficulty or appreciable risk. Now there would be no difficulty about arranging for a fast steaming consort of a thousand tons to accompany such a passenger ship as the The consort might carry no passengers, but she could carry coals and stores, and so make additional space for cabin accommodation in the great ship. Suppose that the cost of navigating such a tender ship across the Atlantic were as much as, say, 2400. Fifty addi- tional berths on the great ship would pay for the whole cost, and the security would be as great as human art could make it. The difficulty and danger of trans-shipping passengers even in a high sea would be no greater than is faced daily in embarking passengers from harbour tugs upon a liner riding in the roadstead at Durban, and would be incomparably less than that of launching life-boats over the aide of a disabled
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