operates in some measure as an antidote. The underwriters at Lloyd's and
the different marine insurance offices, act in a certain degree as the
police force of the seas. Their agents are as plentiful and ubiquitous as
flies, and there is no port of the old or new world without one or more
of them. Through the medium of these marine sentries, whose eyes are
always upon the ocean, disasters at sea are speedily made known to the
underwriters, and in those cases where the telegraph is at hand, a ship
has scarcely broken up or come ashore, before hundreds are reading the
account of the disaster upon the "Board" at Lloyd's. With this spider-like
web of intelligence spreading from port to port and from ocean to ocean,
the chances of wreckers either on shipboard or on land must certainly
diminish. The acuteness of the underwriters, sharpened by self-interest,
is brought to bear upon the distant point, and all the resources of a
powerful corporation are put in force to detect fraud when suspected, and
to punish it when confirmed. A singular instance of the vigour and
ingenuity displayed by their agents in pursuing the marine robber was
afforded by the case of the American ship _W. T. Sayward_. This vessel was
reported by her skipper to have been lost off Loo Choo, on her voyage from
San Francisco to Shanghai, and the sum claimed of the insurers in this
country was £50,000, the value of the cargo, which was reported to have
comprised, among other things, 50,000 Carolus dollars. It struck the
gentleman engaged to settle the claim that it was very unusual to ship
such a quantity of this "Pillar" dollar, and on inquiring of the
money-changers, he learnt that there was not a tithe of that number at
present in existence out of China. This discovery at once aroused
suspicion, and agents were sent to the spot where the ship had been lost,
when it was found that the sailors, suspecting some roguery, returned to
the wreck after the captain had departed, dived into her hold and
discovered that she had been wilfully scuttled. They lighted, by happy
chance, upon some of the boxes in which the "dollars" were shipped, and
they were found to contain only iron nails and leaden bullets. The nails
were selected for the sake of the chink. The assured, having heard of what
had occurred, never ventured to repeat their claim.
In a more recent case, that of the brig _Cornelia_, a regular trader
between the coast of Mexico and San Francisco, which was wilfully
scuttled off San Quentin on the 27th of March last, it was reported that
she had 48,000 Mexican dollars on board, 19,000 shipped at Mazatlan by an
English house, and 29,000 by other persons. On the captain's own
confession the 19,000 dollars were removed by him just before he scuttled
the vessel, and hidden in the sand at Cape San Lucas, on the coast of
Lower California; the remaining sum of 29,000 dollars he admitted had
never been shipped at all, bills of lading having been fabricated, and a
mythical consignee improvised for the occasion. Had not the agent been on
the alert, this knave would have robbed the underwriters at one swoop of
48,000 dollars.
From the chief moral, or rather immoral, cause of shipwreck and loss at
sea, we pass to a consideration of the physical agents which act directly
in producing these disasters. Of these there are so many, and of such
various natures, that it is difficult to group them. Currents of the
ocean, fog, lightning, icebergs, sandbanks, water-logged ships, defective
compasses, and imperfect charts, are all dangers which beset the path of
navigators, and especially of such as have to run the gauntlet in
ill-found ships. The effect of currents in taking the sailor out of his
reckoning is an old, and formerly perhaps a frequent, cause of shipwreck.
This source of danger is now much obviated by the more intimate knowledge
we are acquiring every day of the general laws which produce the currents.
One of the most effectual as well as simple methods of detecting surface
currents is that known to seamen as the bottle experiment. This has been
practised since 1808, but more especially of late years, and has been
deemed of sufficient importance by the Admiralty to justify an order by
which all Her Majesty's ships are enjoined to throw bottles overboard
containing a paper, on which is noted the position of the ship and the
time the frail messenger was sent forth on its voyage. The bottle,
carefully sealed up, traverses the ocean wherever the winds and
surface-drift may carry it, and, after a passage of longer or shorter
duration, is perhaps safely washed by the tide upon some beach. Without
doubt many are smashed upon the rocks, others again are sunk by weeds
growing to them, some are destroyed by the attacks of birds or the jaws of
hungry sharks, or if by chance they avoid all these dangers, they may be
consigned to oblivion upon an uninhabited shore. It is estimated, however,
that at least one-tenth are recovered. A collection of upwards of 200 has
been made at the Admiralty, and are laid down in a chart called the
Current Bottle Chart.
A single glance at this chart displays the principal well-known currents
of the Atlantic ocean. The general tendency of the bottles to go to the
eastward in the northern parts of this sea, and to the westward in lower
latitudes, is at once apparent. It is equally evident that to the
southward of the parallel of 40° N. on the eastern side of the Atlantic
the bottles drift to the southward, while those again in the vicinity of
the Canaries and Cape Verd Islands take a westerly direction. Those
further south, lose themselves among the West-India Islands, and some
penetrating further are found on the coast of Mexico, between Galveston
and Tanessied. A few manifest the effects of the counter-current of the
celebrated Gulf-stream, while others again, on the western side of the
Atlantic, from about 40° N., are set to the eastward. Indeed, there seems
to be a determination of all to the northward of the parallel of 40°, or
that of Philadelphia on the American seaboard, to make their way to the
eastward--some to the coast of France, in the Bay of Biscay, others to the
western shores of Great Britain and Ireland, and others again to the
shores of Norway.
We thus recognize distinctly, first the Portugal current, setting
southward; then the equatorial current, influenced by the trade winds;
then the extraordinary effects of the waters of the Gulf-stream flowing
northward along the American coast, over the banks of Newfoundland--one
portion following its north-east course and penetrating to Norway, and
another continuing easterly into the Bay of Biscay. But let us
particularize a few of the remarkable journeys made by these glass
voyagers over the deep. The _Prima Donna_ was thrown over off Cape Coast
Castle, on the west coast of Africa, and after a voyage of somewhere
within two years was found on the coast of Cornwall. Now, to have arrived
there, it must have been carried eastward by the well-known Guinea
current, and reaching the Bights of Biafra and Benin it would meet the
African current then coming from the southward, with which it would
recross the equator and travel with the equatorial current through the
West-India Islands, and getting into the Gulf-stream, would be carried by
this to the north-east, and thus would be landed on the Cornish coast,
after making a detour of many thousand miles. But curious as this is, it
is not the only instance, for we find that the _Lady Montagu_, setting out
in nearly 8° S. lat., about midway between Brazil and Africa, a position
which would fairly place it in the equatorial current, made the same
voyage, but landed at Guernsey, having accomplished the course in 295
days, or between the 15th October, 1820, and the 6th of August, 1821.
Confining ourselves now to the area included between 30° N. lat. and the
equator, the general effect of the heat of the Gulf of Mexico in forcing
the waters thither is plainly indicated by the direction which the bottles
have followed that are included within those limits. Those thrown
overboard in the Mexican Gulf, to the north of Cape Catoche of Yucatan,
are hurried away with it and cast on the American shore, near St.
Augustine and Charleston. Other instances show the effects of the
counter-current of the Gulf-stream on its eastern or ocean side, in
driving bottles to the south-east, a current that must have affected the
ships of Columbus in his first discovery, and which, upon his return
northward among the islands, without doubt met and opposed his progress.
A curious example of the effects of the wind on the surface-waters is
shown by a bottle thrown over from H.M.S. _Vulcan_ in the midst of the
Gulf-stream, about 130 miles southward of Cape Hatteras. The ship was on
her way to Bermuda, where she arrived, and the bottle, instead of being
carried by the current to the north-east like others, actually went after
her and arrived at Bermuda also. But we find noted on the paper that a
strong northerly wind was blowing when the bottle started. This must have
been sufficient to have checked its progress to the north-east, but
allowed it to approach the eastern border of the Gulf-stream, whence it
would drift into the eddy or counter-current, and thus become thrown on
Bermuda. Again, between the Gulf-stream and the American coast bottles
have found their way to that shore, while those to the northward of the
parallel of 40° have invariably gone eastward; and many thrown over near
the meridian of 20° have drifted into the Bay of Biscay, and been cast on
the French coast.
Among the numbers of bottles which have travelled westward with the
equatorial and tropical current two are remarkable, as being thrown
overboard about 700 miles from each other and yet arriving at nearly the
same destination. They were thrown from sister-ships when on their errand
of carrying relief, by way of Behring Strait, to Franklin and his devoted
crew. The first was dropped from the _Investigator_, Sir R. Maclure, in
lat. 12°, long. 26°, the 27th of February, 1850, and was found on the 27th
August following on Ambergris Cay, on the Yucatan coast; the second was
sent afloat on the 3rd March, 1850, by Captain Collinson, in the
_Enterprise_, in lat. 1° N., long. 26° W., and drifted to the coast inside
of that cay, about 30 miles to the northward of it. That the two bottles
should take their western course was to be expected; but that they should
have gone to resting-places so near each other is singular, considering
that their points of starting were so far asunder.
The Gulf-stream, the limits of which are so clearly intimated by these
little messengers, is but a sample of a grand system of currents which are
produced by the unequal temperature of the different zones. These currents
of hot and cold water are accompanied by atmospheric changes equally
extraordinary; and, taken together, they largely affect the course of the
navigator from the old to the new world, and, not unfrequently, are the
cause of the most fearful shipwrecks.
Lieutenant Maury, in his Physical Geography of the Sea, has boldly likened
the causes at work to produce the celebrated Gulf-stream to the mechanical
arrangements by which apartments are heated. The furnace is the torrid
zone, the Mexican Gulf and the Caribbean Sea are the caldrons, and the
Gulf-stream is the conducting-pipe by which the warm water and the air
above it, are dispersed to the banks of Newfoundland and to the
north-western shores of the old world.[28] By this beneficent process the
cold of our northern latitudes is greatly ameliorated. The waters sent
north and north-east are edged by return currents, the one finding its way
close to the banks of Newfoundland and along the seaboard of the States,
and the other returning by the North Sea, the Bay of Biscay, and the west
coast of Africa, until about the latitude of the Cape de Verdes it crosses
westward again to fill up the void caused by the waters issuing from the
Gulf of Florida. Thus the grand circuit is for ever maintained, not
always, however, exactly in the same form, but varying according to the
season. In the winter, the cold current coming S.S.W. along the Atlantic
coast of North America is greatly augmented, and pushes the Gulf-stream
further to the south-east. With the return of summer this stream, in its
turn, thrusts aside the waters coming from the Polar Ocean. Between these
two periods the trough of the Gulf-stream, to use Lieutenant Maury's
forcible expression, "wavers about in the ocean like a pennon in the
breeze." The temperature of the Gulf-stream, even in the winter, is at the
summer level as it runs between two walls of nearly ice-cold water. Sir
Philip Brooke found the air on either side of it at the freezing point, at
the same time that that of the stream was at 80°. This difference in the
temperature of air and water is probably the cause of those terrible
hurricanes that occur in the Atlantic and among the West-Indian Islands,
and which make it the most dangerous navigation, during the winter, in the
world. The average of wrecks on the Atlantic seaboard of the United States
during these rigorous months is not less than three a day. Sailors term
the Gulf-stream "The weather-breeder;" and well they may, considering its
frightful effect in producing commotion in sea and air. In Franklin's time
it was no uncommon thing for vessels bound in winter for the Capes of
Delaware to be blown off land, and forced to go to the West Indies, and
there wait for the return of spring before they could attempt to make for
this point. The snow-storms and the furious gales which greet the ship as
she leaves the warm waters of the Gulf and nears the shores of North
America, are quite dramatic in their effect. One day she is sailing
through tepid water, and enjoying a summer atmosphere, the next, perhaps,
driving before a snow-storm, her rigging a mass of icicles, and her crew
frozen by the piercing blast. The Gulf-stream is answerable for another
phenomenon--the fogs which invariably shroud the Banks of Newfoundland,
and which render the approach to the North-American coast in winter so
particularly dangerous. The hot water of the Gulf-stream gives up its
vapour to the cold air, and hangs about the coasts an impenetrable
curtain, which baffles the navigator's skill, renders useless his
chronometer, and but too often sends his bark to destruction upon the
hidden shore.
Another danger of the stormy Atlantic arises from the flow southward, in
the spring and summer months, of icebergs. These stupendous masses have
their breeding-place in Davis's Strait, from which they issue in
magnificent procession directly the current increases in a southerly
direction. Polar navigators have been surprised to find these huge
monsters moving against the wind, apparently by some inherent force, and
crashing through vast fields of ice, as if impatient to escape from the
silence and desolation of the Polar seas. The explanation of this singular
occurrence is, that powerful under-currents are acting upon the submerged
portions, which, in all cases, vastly preponderate over the glittering
precipices of crystal that appear above the water-line. As the icebergs
advance into the open waters of the Atlantic, they at last come to the
edge of the Gulf-stream, where, in "the great bend," about latitude 43°,
they harbour in dangerous numbers, and without doubt send many a noble
ship headlong to the bottom. In all probability the ill-fated _President_
was thus destroyed, and some towering iceberg, that has long since bowed
its glittering peaks to the solvent action of the warm water of the
Gulf-stream, was, perhaps, the only witness of the calamity which placed
the noble _Pacific_ among the list of ships that have sailed forth into
eternity.
If the northern latitudes of the Atlantic have their dangers of ice, the
southern latitude, especially the Caribbean Sea, in common with all
intertropical oceans, have their dangers of fire. The hurricanes of those
latitudes are generally accompanied by visitations of fearful
thunder-storms, in which many a good ship is enveloped and destroyed. In
the midst of a summer sea a clipper ship may be suddenly assailed by one
of those tremendous conflicts of the elements, of the approach of which
the silver finger of the barometer, unless carefully watched, has scarcely
had time to give warning. However prepared by good seamanship and an
active crew, there she must lie on the vexed ocean, her tall masts so many
suction-tubes to draw down upon her the destructive fire from heaven. In
his Report to the Admiralty, laid before Parliament in 1854, entitled
"Shipwrecks by Lightning," Sir William Snow Harris--whose exertions to
find a remedy for this evil are above all praise--states that in six
years, between 1809 and 1815, forty sail of the line, twenty frigates, and
ten sloops were so crippled by being struck as in many cases to be placed
for a time _hors de combat_. In fifty years there were 280 instances of
serious damage to ships in the British navy. Of these the _Thisbey_
frigate, off Scilly, in January, 1786, affords a melancholy example. The
log represents her "decks swept by lightning, people struck down in all
directions, the sails and gear aloft in one great blaze, and the ship left
a complete wreck." In the merchant service the list of disasters is
fearful. Since the year 1820 thirty-three ships, varying from 300 to 1,000
tons, have been totally destroyed by lightning, and forty-five greatly
damaged.
"A great peculiarity," says Sir William Snow Harris, "may be observed in
cases of ships set on fire by lightning, viz. a rapid spreading of the
fire in every part of the vessel, as if the electric agency had so
permeated the mass as to render the extinction of the fire by artificial
means impossible." Take, for instance, the burning of the _Sir Walter
Scott_ in June, 1855. This fine passenger ship, of 650 tons, was struck
in the Bay of Biscay: the lightning shivered the foremast, completely
raked the vessel, and instantly set fire to the cargo. The passengers and
crew had scarcely time to jump from their beds and put on their clothes,
and leap into the boats, when the masts went over the sides, the flames
shot up into the air, and the ship went down like a stone. Such
extraordinary catastrophes as these seem to set forth in unmistakable
terms the feebleness of man in the presence of the tremendous powers of
nature. In reality, they are only forcible instances to call upon him to
use the means for dominating the peril. Of all the dangers that beset the
mariner at sea, danger by lightning is the only one that he can thoroughly
guard against. To Sir William Snow Harris we owe the perfecting of the
lightning-conductor for marine purposes, and the power of braving
unscathed the direst electric storms. The permanent conductor adopted in
the navy in 1842 is arranged so as to extend along the masts, from the
truck to the keelson, and so out to sea. In the hull various branches
ramify, and admit of a free dispersion of the electric fluid in all
directions. Thus armed, the ship is impregnable to all the forked
lightnings that may dart about her. Since the system of fitting men of war
with this apparatus has been adopted, no vessel of the Royal Navy has been
injured. The log of the frigate _Shannon_, commanded by the late gallant
Sir W. Peel on his voyage out to China, affords a striking example of the
manner in which the fury of such electric storms as are only to be met
with in the Indian Ocean, was baffled by a contrivance which may truly be
called, in the words of Dibdin--
"The sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,
And takes care of the life of poor Jack."
"When the ship was about 90 miles south of Java she became enveloped
in a terrific thunderstorm, and at 5 p.m. an immense ball of fire
covered the maintopgallant-mast: at 5·15 the ship was struck a second
time on the mainmast by apparently an immense mass of lightning; at
half-past 5 another very heavy discharge fell upon the mainmast, and
from this time until 6 p.m. the ship was completely enveloped in sharp
forked lightning. On the next day her masts and rigging were carefully
overhauled, but, thanks to Sir Snow Harris's system of permanent
lightning-conductors, no injury whatever to ship or rigging was
discovered."
If we compare this remarkable case with that of His Majesty's frigate
_Lowestoffe_, when near the island of Minorco in 1796, we perceive how
great is the protection science affords to the seaman. The frigate was
struck, it appears, at 12·25 P.M. by a heavy flash, which knocked three
men out of the tops, one of whom was killed on the spot. Within five
minutes the ship was again struck, and her topmast was shivered to atoms.
In another minute a third shock shivered the foremast and mainmast, and
set fire to the vessel in many places, raked the deck from end to end,
killed one man, paralyzed and burnt others, and knocked several persons
out of the tops. In two parallel cases, the addition of a rod of copper
made all the difference between safety and havoc. The example of the Royal
Navy is being followed by the merchant-service, but not so speedily as it
should be. When it is remembered that the treasure-clippers trading
between Australia and this country often bring home nearly a million
sterling in addition to a large complement of passengers, it does seem
remarkable that the lightning apparatus is not considered as essential to
their equipment as the boats, especially as they have to traverse an ocean
where thunder-storms are of common occurrence. The cost of the whole
apparatus is not above £100, and if the cupidity of the merchant is not
sufficient to induce him to supply it, we think that Government should
compel him, in order to insure the safety of the stream of passengers who
annually leave our shores.
In the whole catalogue of disasters at sea, those which present the most
terrible features are water-logged timber ships. The timber trade between
Great Britain and her American colonies employs a very considerable fleet
of large vessels. As wood is a "floating cargo," old worn-out
West-Indiamen, which would not be used for any other purpose, are freely
employed. A few years since, in addition to a full cargo, they carried
heavy deck-loads, which so strained their shattered fabrics, that they
often became water-logged, and were sometimes abandoned in the middle of
the Atlantic. The sufferings of the crews on these occasions in their open
boats were appalling. Beating about for weeks on the waste of waters
without food or drink beyond the rain that fell from heaven, they were
obliged to sustain existence by preying on the bodies of their dead
companions, and not rarely they cast lots for the living. Since the
passing of the Act prohibiting deck-loading, these disasters are far less
frequent; but they have by no means ceased.[29] At the time we write there
are several timber-ships drifting about the ocean, floating heaps of
desolation, at the mercy of the Gulf-stream, which will ultimately cast
them on some European shore, or drift them into the North Sea, to serve as
fuel for the Esquimaux. In turning over the leaves of Lloyd's List, we
find indications of these dreary wrecks, which, clothed in seaweed, are
driven over the face of the waters, and sighted by passing ships, of which
they often cause the sudden destruction, whilst careering along in seeming
security. When these waifs and strays of the deep drift into
much-frequented ocean paths, they are doubtless the cause of many of those
dreadful catastrophes witnessed only by the eye of God, and our only
knowledge of which is a curt notice on the "Loss-book" at Lloyd's,
"Foundered at Sea, date unknown." A recent instance, in which possibly no
damage was done, will yet suffice to show the risk. The _Virago_, loaded
with teak from Moulmein, in the Indian Ocean, to Queenstown, Ireland,
became water-logged, and was abandoned on the 5th of March last, 155 miles
south-west of Cape Clear. The next day she was passed by the American
liner _Eagle_; on the 17th of the same month a steamer, on her way from
Rotterdam to Gibraltar, reports having seen her; on the 5th of April she
was passed by the _Naiad_ on her passage from Palermo to Milford; and on
the 15th the _Samarang_, on her way to Tenby, met with her; on the 18th
she was seen 160 miles off the Lizard, "in a very dangerous position," by
the _Champion of the Seas_; again, on the 3rd of May, the _Alhambra_
steamer, on her voyage to Southampton, met her in latitude 47°; about the
same time and place she was seen by the _Peru_ steamer, "and appeared as
if run into;" and, finally, on the 20th of May, the telegraph sends word
that she was stranded near Brest, and her cargo was being discharged. It
is curious to note how, amid the tossing of the ocean, her name became
gradually obliterated, till it was totally effaced, a type of the
progressive decay and final destruction of the vessel herself. At first
she is properly reported to Lloyd's as the _Virago_; the next ship makes
her out to be the _Argo_; still later her cognomen is cut down to the
--_go_; and then the name disappears until the French find her upon their
strand. Here we suppose her half-obliterated papers were found, and our
neighbours, according to their usual wont, transmute the _Virago_ into the
_Neroggogi_. From these reports it is evident that a number of large
vessels passed quite close to the wreck, and it is even probable that a
collision may actually have occurred, and no one have been left to tell
the tale. In some cases, where the circumstances of wind and current are
favourable, water-logged ships are taken in tow by other vessels and
become valuable prizes. When, however, these wrecks are in such a
condition that it is clear they cannot be brought in, we think it would be
well if they could be destroyed. A few pounds of powder, judiciously
placed, or a beam or two sawn across by the ship's carpenter, would break
the bond that binds these logs together, and, once separated, they would
not be likely to do much damage.