been spent in setting life-boats up about the
coast is squared against the lives saved, there's
a life for every four pound seven and twopence.
That's the sum. So, the more five-pound notes
go that way, the fewer of us will go this way;"
and he laid a wrinkled finger on the sail. "But
you couldn't tell 'em anything from the pulpit,
sir, unless it wor in charity sermons, about what
is to be bought with fi'-pun' notes. Ah, dear!
I wish I had a lot of 'em!"

When, a week after the storm, I went in
search of a physician to the seaport Jem had
named, and, waiting his time to return with me
when he had seen his patients on the spot,
walked sadly by the ripple of a placid sea, I
came by accident upon the life-boat house. It
was a neat stone building with some show of
architecture in it, with a verandah east and west
sheltering forms upon which pilots and others
might sit under cover in foul weather. I had
been told that, at this town, boat-house and
boat were the gift of a lady of fortune, and it was
evident that she was one who did not give with
two fingers. The wide folding-doors opening
upon the sea were closed and locked. A boy
with a shrimp basket, at my request, went off in
search of Bill the coxswain, who had charge of
one of the keys; and Bill was talkative enough
when he found from whence I came, and whither I
was about to return that evening, also that I
would take a bit of parcel back with me from his
wife to her old father, and that I did really care
very much to know what he could show and tell
me. But what he told me caused me to make
more inquiry, to get. books and papers, and, at
last, to write as I now do, while I sit watching
the night through by the bedside of my little
Ethel, with the moan of the night wind and the
measured dash of the sea filling up all pauses in
my thoughts.

Upon our island coast touch, in each year,
ships that employ a million of men and boys.
Every year, about a thousand vessels suffer upon
the shores of Britain, wreck total or partial, and
sometimes five hundred, sometimes fifteen
hundred (in the very last year sixteen hundred and
forty-six), lives have been lost. In the first
half only of this current year, the average of
twelve months of disaster has already been
attained. Of the total wrecks, nearly one
half the number is found to arise from errors
in seamanship or other preventable causes,
and seventeen in a hundred have occurred to
unseaworthy vessels. Some also are lost.
(there have been eight lost in one year)
because they have been provided with defective
charts or compasses. It is the duty of some
one to secure the timely condemnation of old
vessels, which are now sent out until they sink
at sea, and bring to an untimely death the men
they carry. Of the ships lost, only one out of
four is lost in a storm. Oversight, ignorance,
neglect, and false economy, are more cruel than
storms. Wrecks themselves are in a great
degree preventable. But here the only question is,
how to prevent loss of life by wreck within sight
of the British shores.

The wrecks on our coast last year were more
numerous than they have been in any former year
of which record is kept. The excess was caused
by two violent gales. In the gale of the twenty-
fifth and twenty-sixth of October, there were
one hundred and thirty-three total wrecks and
ninety casualties. The number of lives lost in
that one gale on our shores was within two of
eight hundred. The loss of life would have
been great, had the dead list not been more than
doubled by the loss of four hundred and forty-
six lives in the Royal Charter. After a rest of
five days, the winds blew again on the first day
of November; and, in that second gale, twenty-
nine lives were lost in the wreck of thirty-eight
vessels. There were also two great wrecks
on other days to swell the death list. In
the beginning of spring, more than four
hundred lives were lost at once in the Pomona.
Fifty-six were lost in midwinter with the
Blervie Castle. These were all deaths on
our shore. Of wrecks at sea nothing is said.
It has been found that the proportion of accident
has become much greater than it used to
be in British, as compared with foreign vessels.
Putting out of account the coasting trade, and
reckoning the oversea trade only, the chance of
accident to a British ship is once in one hundred
and seventy-five voyages; but that, to a foreign
ship, the average of accident is only once in
three hundred and thirty-five voyages; accidents
upon our coasts, therefore—strange fact!—are
twice as likely to occur to a vessel that is at
home, as to the vessel of a stranger.

One accident occurred to a vessel aged more
than a century, one to a ship between eighty and
ninety, and another to a ship between ninety and
a hundred years of age. Sixty-four wrecks were
of ships more than fifty years old; but, it is
between the ages of fourteen and twenty, that
ships have appeared to suffer most. The age next
in liability to misfortune was between twenty
and thirty; then the comparatively new ships,
between three and seven, suffered most. Of
the wrecks last year, more than six hundred
were on the east coast, less than five hundred
on the west coast, and less than one hundred
and fifty on the south coast. On the Irish coast
there were but ninety-nine wrecks, against one
hundred and sixty-eight in the preceding year,
but wrecks on the Isle of Man increased in
number from six to twenty-eight.

The value of the property lost by the wrecks
on our coast last year was two millions of money,
the lives lost were, as before said, one thousand
six hundred and forty-five; but as there were
more wrecks, more losses than ever, so were
there also more lives saved from wreck than
ever. About three hundred were saved by life-
boats, nearly as many by the rocket-and-mortar
apparatus, a thousand, by luggers, coast-guard or
fishermen's boats, and small craft, nearly eight
hundred by ships and steam-vessels, and six by
the heroism of individuals.

Last year, as in the previous year, it was the
south-west wind that proved most disastrous.
Of the two most fatal gales, Admiral Fitzroy