crease their watchfulness, to make up for the deficiencies of their crews. But facts seem to contradict every expectation of this kind. With an increase of risks, they seem to increase their recklessness. Perhaps, however, they find it useless to contend with the incompetent and heterogeneous mass under their command. For, once at sea, it too often happens they have no thought of any danger except those which may arise from the winds and the waves. But Lloyds' List proves that more ships are lost by collision, fire, unseaworthiness, not being well found, carelessness, &c., than by stress of weather. In the solitudes of the wide ocean, and even in the English Channel, in shorthanded and badly-manned ships, sail is not shortened because the night is dark, and vigilance, the first law of the deep, is too often simulated by the drowsy look-out, who replies to the ceremonious growl of the officer of the watch with a drowsy "Ay, ay, sir," with blinking eyes and a sleepy brain. Nor is the case mended at the afterpart of the vessel; the man at the wheel is too often overworked, or indifferent and discontented with ill-usage and bad accommodation, to take any interest in the ship; and moreover, he is so situated that all view ahead, even in clear weather, is obstructed by all sorts of boats, hamper, and cabins, which lumber up the decks of our modern ships. The only wonder is, how vessels so crowded ever escape collision; in fact, it is a matter of chance, and, according to reliable statistics, this chance is being reduced year after year.

Any one who pays attention to the cases tried before the admiralty court cannot fail to remark how few collisions appear to be the result of unavoidable circumstances; nay, he soon discovers that, in too many instances, collisions are the result of gross carelessness and stupidity, and that they might have been avoided by care and precaution. Dark nights, fogs, gales, and the usually understood sources of disaster, have not much to do with collision, for the worst cases often occur on a cloudless night, and even in open day. However, of course, night is the time when the majority of these mishaps occur, and the evidence before our courts too often proves that the watch on deck was drowsy, a bad look-out kept, that the helmsman's eyes can see nothing below the weather-leech of the topsail, no light on the bowsprit or in any part of the rigging; and in this happy-go-lucky condition a ship worth a hundred thousand pounds (cargo included), with a precious freight of human life, goes plunging on in her heedless course, as if she were sailing alone on a shoreless sea. 'Drive her along," says the captain; "clap it on her; no fear, for the weather is fine and the breeze is fair."

Matters are no better on the coast of America, for we observe in the New York Times-a good authority on naval affairs-that public attention in the United States has been frequently called to the increasing number of collisions at sea, and their fatal consequences, by the many recent disasters which have occurred on their own coast. That terrible collision of the steamships Arctic and Vesta, in the fog off Newfoundland, will never be forgotten; nor will the more recent destruction of the steamship Lyonnais, on which lamentable occasion nearly 200 lives were sacrificed to the stubbornness of the captain of the Adriatic, who, expecting the steamship to keep out of his way, ran

blindly down before the wind, and struck her a blow amidships. If he had luffed a point or bore away a point in time, the vessels would have avoided a collision. However, the captain of the bark Adriatic has not been severely blamed for the collision, because he had legally the right of way in preference to all steamers; yet we cannot help thinking that if he had contemplated for a moment that nearly 200 souls were to be sacrificed in order that he might stand upon his rights, that terrible calamity would never have occurred.

We have briefly alluded to a few collisions that might be avoided ; there are some that are unavoidable, or, at all events, they seem at present beyond man's control; and these form a terrible commentary upon the perils of Atlantic navigation. The fate of the President, the City of Glasgow, and the Pacific, is still a mystery, and one that perhaps will never be unveiled. There is danger from fire, not from the engines, but from the carelessness of smokers, who fling away their halfextinguished matches and cigar ends; but the greatest danger, and one that is ever present, is from collision, particularly when the weather is thick, as on the banks of Newfoundland. Here the dangers of ocean steaming are at a maximum; and the great steamboat race across the Atlantic, between the Americans and ourselves, increases the hazards of this foggy sea. Let the reader imagine a huge ship, urged along at twelve or fourteen knots an hour in a thick fog or a dark night; the weather perhaps is cold, but suddenly an extra chill creeps over the air, and insinuates itself into one's very bones, no matter how warmly we are clad. The captains of the Atlantic mail packets ought to be, as indeed they are, the personification of vigilance itself; and it has been remarked, that ten years' service between New York and Liverpool taxes their energies more than twenty elsewhere. The captain, who has been watching all day and night on his galley between the paddle-boxes, feels the unusual chill, and immediately consults his thermometer. Ah! the sensitive mercury has felt it also, and has shrivelled into a more compact compass; it has, in other words, fallen in the tube. Nature has spoken out boldly and told the captain that icebergs are surging to the southward, and that one of these ponderous floating masses is near at hand. The peril is great; but the great race against time must be maintained. The United States mail steamer made the last trip in nine days ten hours, and the British mail must do it in less. The captain cannot wait even for an iceberg, and on the good ship is driven at full speed, and every plunge she makes is into darkness most profound. Keen eyes and well-trained ears are sent forward to the extremity of the bowsprit, and all that man can do is done, and the order is, "Go ahead, and trust to Providence." It is as well not to slacken speed, for by so doing the danger is only prolonged; and as for collision, it matters not whether it takes place at a speed of fourteen or four knots, for the difference in all probability would never be known; for to talk of getting out boats or constructing rafts at such a crisis, is about as idle and useless as to suppose that all risk and danger will ever be eliminated from ocean-steaming by the skill or caution of man.

The new and powerful modes of propulsion employed by steamers enhance the perils of collision, and invest the subject with a degree of

interest that is quickened by a lively sense of danger. What, for instance, can be more dreadful to contemplate than a collision between two of the great mail packets that run between Liverpool and America? Who knows how the President, the City of Glasgow, or the Pacific were lost? No one can tell. The track over which these packets sail is a narrow one, comparatively speaking. The logs of the Collins' and Cunard steainers show that it is not above 200 miles broad, and that it often happens that outward-bound and homeward steamers "sight" one another on passing. All that is required to bring about as terrible a calamity as can be imagined is a dark night or thick fog: two packets driven against time, approaching each other at the rate of thirty miles an hour; ten minutes' inattention, or, as Jack calls it, a bad look-out, and then the Lord have mercy upon the souls of all on board both ships, for help upon this earth there would be none.

The idea that some such disaster may some time happen has forced itself upon the attention of shipowners; and it has been proposed to lay down a track over which steamers bound to the United States must run, and also to limit the vessels from the States to England to a track to the southward of this. These routes have received the fanciful name of "Steam Lanes ;" and it seems, after great and laborious investigation, that the adoption of such routes would shorten the average length of the voyage to the West, and only slightly increase it to the East-that is to say, that one "lane" will practically shorten the distance from the point of departure in Ireland to the coast of the United States by about twenty-five miles, while the other lengthens the passage to Europe by about sixty; but as this prolonged distance ensures safety, the loss in time, if any, will be more than compensated for.

Now, the proposition is simply to come to an understanding that a "lane" of twenty or thirty miles' breadth on the northern or southern border of the great track of the ocean steamers, which is, as before stated, about 200 miles' average breadth, and recommend the mail steamers and others to use one or the other, according to the direction they are going. By this arrangement there would be a large area of clear sea-space between vessels outward and homeward bound, and dangers from collision with other vessels very much reduced.

There can be but little doubt that many dreadful calamities occur at sea that never reach the ears of people on shore. What becomes of the vessel per week which Lloyds' List assures us sails, and is never heard of again? Do the fifty and odd ships that start on their mysterious and fatal voyages per annum founder from collision, or from what cause? If they are wrecked, even on the most barbarous shore, one would think we should hear of them again; however, we fear the calamity is even more dreadful than wreck, no matter on what coast.

We are not about to propose a remedy for this terrible loss; however, we think that something might be done to alleviate the sufferings of mariners after collision, particularly in a sea-way like the channel, by a better system of night-signals than those now in use. What is wanted, not only on our coasts, but upon the coasts of other countries, as well as upon the open sea, is a plain, intelligible, and well-understood distresslight signal. This is, indeed, confessed on all sides; yet, singular enough, either from apathy, ignorance, or routine, no one seems willing

to adopt a remedy as simple as hoisting the ensign upside down, or any other symbol of distress in use by day. It is positively a disgrace to the scientific age in which we live, that if a vessel is in imminent peril at night she may fire rockets and guns if she has them; and although these signals may be both seen and heard by people on shore, yet the chances are ten to one against her obtaining any assistance. To show what may happen on our shores, let us state what did happen, as we hold this sort of illustration to be about as conclusive as any logic we are acquainted with. Lord Yarborough was cruising in the month of May last, off Cromer, in his yacht Zoe. A fair wind was taking his vessel at the rate of eight knots on her course. At 10.30 P.M. the wind suddenly fell, and the yacht was drifted by a powerful tide upon the sands which make that coast so dangerous. She soon became a wreck. His Lordship's yacht was well found with all the known signals-that is, he fired rockets and guns, and all to no purpose; so he wisely trusted to his own boats, and reached the English main, with all his people, in safety.

Now this accident happened in moderate weather, and we have only to imagine a gale of wind blowing, and then the case might have assumed a more melancholy aspect. When his Lordship landed, as we understand he did in one of his own boats, he naturally asked the officer of the neighbouring coast-guard station why his rockets had not been attended to, and the reply he received shows how inefficient the present loose system of night-signals is at sea, in cases where assistance is needed from the shore. He was told that "rockets are never noticed, because steamers so often fire them when passing vessels belonging to the same owner.' So that, if the boats of the Zoe had not been available, or if the weather had been boisterous, every soul might have perished in consequence of not having a well-known danger-signal to be used at night at sea.

Another instance of the disgraceful state of the present system of signals in use to express distress, is exemplified in the fate of the Josephine Willis, which ship was run down and sunk by the Mangerton steamer, in the month of February, 1856, about four miles from the beach of Folkestone.* The night was dark, but there was no wind; and, although rockets were fired incessantly, yet no assistance was rendered her, and seventy lives were lost close to a shore covered with boats and the handiest boatmen in the world. It was not denied by the men on the beach, nor by the many vessels in the locality at the time of this terrible catastrophe, that the rockets were not seen, but that they conveyed no intelligence that assistance was needed. All sorts of suppositions were hazarded-that some vessel wanted a pilot, or a party from the shore; that it was a preconcerted signal of some sort, which was understood by somebody; but the last thing that any one appears to have thought of was, that a fine ship and seventy human beings were rapidly sinking to the bottom of the sea.

Now, any person might imagine that there is no means of communicating with the shore, or of conveying intelligence by night to a ship that might be near at hand when a calamity, similar to that which befel

An account of this accident will be found in the "United Service Magazine," for September, 1856, under the title of "Night Signals at Sea."

the Josephine Willis, occurs. At all events, it is reasonable to assume that, if any known simple means existed, it would be used. And yet we venture to assert that a suggestion which we know has been forwarded to all the great steam companies in the kingdom, as well as to the most eminent shipowners, to the Board of Trade, the Admiralty, and to the secretary at Lloyd's, would, if adopted, go far to remedy this inefficient state of night-signals at sea.

What, we again ask (as we have before asked, in a previous paper on this subject, in this Magazine), is to prevent the adoption of a red rocket, to be fired only on occasions of great danger, for the purpose of obtaining assistance-such occasions, for instance, as the yacht Zoe, and the more terrible calamity of the Josephine Willis, and the scores of other mishaps of a similar kind which are continually occurring on the shores of the United Kingdom? If a red rocket fired at night was known to mean DISTRESS, it would convey positive information, and not be, as rockets are at present, only so much fireworks. Give them a tongue, and red rockets will speak as plain as the Union-Jack upside down does by day. Every seaman, nay, almost every man in these islands, knows what the one means: why should not a red rocket be equally intelligible?

The Board of Trade and Navigation has the power of compelling every vessel carrying passengers to carry twelve blue-lights, or a cannon with twelve charges, for making signals. These are, for night purposes, often useless; simply because they mean nothing specific. It would be easy for the Board to issue an order that every vessel carrying passengers should also have twelve red rockets, to be used only in cases of extreme danger. As for making the new signal known upon the coast, a notification to the different coast-guard stations would give it all the publicity required, as far as the United Kingdom is concerned; and it might be adopted by other maritime nations hereafter. The affair is remarkable for its simplicity, for it would appear that all that is wanted is an order from the Board of Trade that a new signal of distress, by means of a red rocket, has been added to those already in force. In conclusion, we trust that there is no need of further appeal, either to the Admiralty or the Board of Trade, for the speedy adoption of a more intelligible danger or distress signal, to be used at night at sea.

R. P.

THE SAPPERS AND MINERS AT BOMARSUND, THE
DANUBE, AND SEBASTOPOL.

THE Sappers and Miners have become quite a crack corps, or rather had just attained that pinnacle of regimental ambition, when, lo! they ceased to exist. The Sappers and Miners are, in fact, among the things that were. They are now to be looked upon in the same light as the Megatherium, the Megalosaurus, and other extinct monsters, whose tusks would batter down a Sebastopol, and whose tails would form an electric cable across the Atlantic. Fortunately a gallant author has preserved to us a very full account of this military fossil. Quartermaster Connolly-and we congratulate him on his elevation to a rank