THE BLAME OF STEAM-BOAT ACCIDENTS.
Titc conclusion to which we came last week respecting the responsibility in cases of shipwreck is borne out by concurrent tes- timony. The master of the Pegasus appears to have been such a man as the proprietors of the vessel should not have employed, or they should only have employed him under restrictions which would have made an accident so incurred impossible ; for the event had twice before, if not oftener, convicted him of gross reckless- ness. It is said that the masters of coasting-vessels commonly re- sort to a reckless mode of navigation, for the purpose of making short cuts, to beat a rival, or simply to save trouble. Casual safety tends to convince the untrained mind that danger is absent : ask a careless mother whose child is playing with edge-tools or with fire, whether it is safe, and she will probably answer, "He has never hurt himself yet "; forgetting that an accident never will happen until the first time. However, it was not the first time with the master of the Pegasus : W. W., writing to the Times, from Bedford, on the 27th July, says- " In 1836, 1 left Hull for Leith. I was to have gone by the Pegasus ; but she was laid up with a hole in her bottom, having run upon a rock near Berwick, and I was obliged to go by the St. George. On my voyage I inquired of the captain or the mate, I am not sure which, the particulars of the accident ; and he told me that it was entirely owing to her going too near the shore in at- tempting to get before the St. George ; and that not long before she was nearly wrecked on the mud at the mouth of the Humber from the same cause. He described the captain of the Pegasus as a very daring fellow, and said, 'Depend upon it, Sir, he will come that once too often some day ' : and when I heard of the late disastrous affair, I remembered his words. Although racing could not have been the cause of the late accident, yet it certainly does appear that the Pegasus, when she struck, was far out of the course that a prudent man would have chosen."
The next witness is another correspondent of the same paper, writing from Tunbridge Wells on the same day-
" It was about the middle of August, some six or seven years ago, whilst I was returning from Leith to Hull in the afore-mentioned vessel, that we ran at full speed on a sunken rock somewhere off Newton Point, near the Fern Is- lands. The water instantly made fast into the hold; and the vessel, perceptibly oinking, was run ashore near the village of Newton ; where we lay nearly two days, whilst the ebb-tides afforded opportunities for rough repairs. Had there been any wind at the time, it is but probable that her late melancholy fate would not have been deferred to this 'Talent year. A testimonial, exculpating the captain from any share of blame, was signed by many of the passengers at the time ; the justice of which 1 do not pretend to affirm or deny. Two summers after this, whilst I happened to be again returning from a tour in Scotland, the Pegasus, during the night, violently grazed on a rock in the same locality."
Those, therefore, who committed passengers to the care of the master of the Pegasus, intrusted them to one who habitually braved shipwreck. The only efficient check upon such wanton disregard of human life appears to be, to make it expensive. If corporate companies, having no bowels—except in the grossest sense, for
public dinners—care nothing for the prospect of losing fifty per- sons, they would for the loss of fifty swinging penalties on neglect.
Nor should it be enough to compel steam-boat proprietors to avoid those things which actively conduce to shipwreck: they should be made to provide precautions against such accidents as cannot be avoided. The Columbia went on a rock in a fog, and with an unsuspected current, which seem to have baffled nautical skill. A passenger says that the boats would not have sufficed to carry all passengers ashore : is that true ? If so, is not the placing people in a ship without adequate means of escape really doing that which may result in murder ? Boats, however, may be swamped; it is difficult to apportion their aid fairly among all; yet a short time to keep the shipwrecked souls on the surface of the water would often be their salvation. It is probable that every one who could have managed to float after the wreck of the Pegasus would have been picked up and been at this moment alive. Mr. Moner.r. MACKENZIE might still be performing pious offices among his friends ; Mr. Evrort might now be playing in a London theatre ; the two little children whom Mr. BAILLIE saw prattling beside their mother while the ship was sinking, might still be sport- ing in health and joy, could they but have been kept for a short time with their heads above water. Could the fifty pas- sengers have been rendered buoyant, death from drowning might have been compounded for by a few bad colds. It is very easy to render the human frame buoyant. Various expedients have been suggested; but one of the simplest and most efficacious appears to be a contrivance described in another page,—the " safety-cape " recommended by the Humane Society of Edinburgh and Leith, the very place whence the Pegasus started. It is a short caoutchouc cloak or cape, which may be inflated to the thickness of a wadded cape, and will support the wearer with the head and shoulders out of the water. There is a belt of the same kind, which may be worn round the waist with the cloak. The cape is not ostensibly more than a convenient article of dress. Of similar materials might be made buoyant articles to be thrown into the water among the drowning, and so contrived that they might cling to them. A suit- able store of such life-buoys or life-preservers every steamer ought to be compelled to keep on board : no packet-boat ought to go out of port without an ample supply of materials for rendering its whole human cargo of passengers and crew perfectly buoyant. The vessel should have such apparatus, because it is in the capacity of passengers alone that the people can need them : a man may never go to sea but once, the steamer goes out daily. With such means at command for repressing bad management and providing help, the recurrence of accidents so fatal as that of the Pegasus would be nearly impossible.
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