of three men was drowning, and it blew a gale:
out started two men and two brave women
(God bless them!) to the rescue. The barque
Mahomed Shah, on the fourth of May, bound
to New Zealand, took fire at sea. Mr. Paddon,
master of the brig Ellen, saved at great risk
the crew and passengers, fifty-nine souls, and
found means to carry them in his own vessel
to Hobart Town, a distance of two thousand
miles from the scene of the catastrophe. A
man whose boat was wrecked during a heavy
storm in Waltham Bay, was struggling in the
water, when he was noticed by a farmer's
boy, who rushed instantly into the surf, and
imperilled his own life seriously in
accomplishing a rescue. A Norwegian brig drove on
the Holm Sand on the coast of Suffolk, during
an easterly gale on a dark night. The
Pakefield life-boat, manned by Captain Joachim,
put out to rescue, and in the midst of the
darkness and the storm found a drunken crew
madly swearing that they would stick by the
ship, and resisting every effort made to save
them. The boat returned, allowed the miserable
people time to become sober, went to
them again, and found them glad enough to
come ashore. A smack was stranded on the
eighteenth of October last on the Anglesey
coast, and its little crew was saved by men
who went out in a shore boat, though the sea
raged so fiercely that it took four hours to
reach the wreck, only a mile distant. On the
same night there was a brig wrecked three
miles from Skegness, on the coast of Lincolnshire.
The coxswain of the life-boat, Samuel
Moody, gallantly set out with his men through
a violent storm, a heavy sea, and intense
darkness. They brought ashore the entire
crew with the master's wife and child. All
persons on board the schooner New Jane,
totally lost on the Cornish coast five days
before Christmas last, were lifted out over
the bowsprit of the wreck by one noble seaman,
Charles Pearce, who was not then saving
life for the first time. Once, while he was
engaged about this work, and when there
was a child in his arms, the sea dashed him
away. The child was not to be recovered,
but the bold sailor regained his footing on
the rock, and finished his good service to
humanity.

For, good service to humanity is always
done when one man's act is of a kind that
confers honour and credit on his race. In
the notes just recorded, we have shown how
both the merchant and the seaman can forget
his selfish interest to save men who are
struggling in the actual horror of a wreck;
and we believe that there are not many in
either class who have not the same generous
impulses. If men could only submit habitually
to a fiftieth part of the heroical self-
sacrifice with which they face an actual
danger, that would be enough probably in
three cases out of four to prevent any such
danger from occurring. It is fearful to think
of the fifteen hundred men, women, and
children, who, during the past year alone, have
struggled in the water off those very coasts to
which we are now repairing for a holiday
season of rest and refreshment.

The recent Merchant Shipping Act
contains certain provisions which have been
devised with the purpose of diminishing the
frequency of accidents at sea. They are good
for something; though we fear not good
for very much.

It is required by this Act, that no British
vessels, except whalers and steam-tugs, shall
proceed to sea from any port in the United
Kingdom unless provided with a certain
number of boats, according to their tonnage,
as fixed by a table annexed to the Act. But,
it is added, this enactment shall not apply to
any ship holding a certificate under the
Passengers' Act, eighteen hundred and fifty-
two. Can any non-official mind see why the
necessity of having a sufficient number of
boats on board is not as great in an emigrant
ship as in any other? Any non-official mind
can, we are quite sure, understand the other
defect in the clause. The declaration that
boats must be had according to the scale in
an annexed table, is good; but an official
compromise makes up for that. The "annexed
table" is a joke to all shipowners. For
vessels of six hundred tons and under, the
Board of Trade offers to be content with a
much shorter provision of boats than
shipowners have been hitherto used of their own
accord to place in them. A diminution
instead of an increase in the provision of boats
would so far, therefore, be the most natural
consequence of this part of the enactment.

The Act then, still excepting all certificated
passenger vessels, directs, under defined
penalties, that no vessel containing more
than ten passengers shall go to sea without a
life-boat, or a boat made buoyant after the
manner of a life-boat, or without also two life-
buoys, which shall at all times be left fit for
use. This seems to mean, that seamen must
carry with them an ægis of ten passengers if
they hope to have on board, by the compulsion
of an Act of Parliament, a life-boat or a
buoy. As for the buoy, since it is, in by far the
greatest number of cases the common seaman,
engaged on the ropes, at the mast-head,
and otherwise about the vessel, who falls
overboard, it is rather hard that no consideration
is had for the crew in ordering that
life-buoys should be kept. A good cork
life-buoy costs about thirteen shillings,—
Would it be a ruinous demand on owners of
vessels sent out, even with less than ten
souls on board, and none of them passengers,
that every such vessel should have a life-
buoy on board? Men are, indeed, more likely
to fall overboard from little barks and
schooners than from ships.

And why are we to be content, on a large
vessel, with one life-boat only, and only a
limited number of other boats, the ordering
of which is left to the discretion of the crew?