Chapter IV (3)

The messes of the crew are divided into three classes: First, that of the seamen, quartermaster, carpenter, etc.; secondly, that of lamp-trimmers and servants and miscellaneous people; and thirdly, that of the stokers, greasers, and trimmers. The seamen sleep and mess in the forecastle, the stewards in the glory hole, and the engineer force in the port forecastle, or, on board the new ships, in an apartment just forward of the stoke-hole. In all these quarters the mess-tables trice up to the under side of the upper deck, and the bunks are two or three tiers deep. As a rule the men provide their own bedding and table-gear, the company agreeing to give good food in plenty, but nothing more. This seems shabby, even if in these degenerate days we need not hope to find a ship’s husband like Sir Francis Drake, who not only “procured a complete set of silver for the table, and furnished the cook-room with many vessels of the same metal, but engaged several musicians to accompany them.” I am afraid the only music you will hear in these dreary quarters is the shout when the “snipes,” as my lieges the stokers call the coal-trimmers, rush in at eight in the evening with the high feast known as _the black pan_. This olla podrida consists of the remains of the saloon dinner, and is always saved for the watch by the cooks and bakers in payment for the coal hoisted for the kitchens and galleys. It is a grewsome feast, as one may well imagine, but it is the supreme luxury in the sea life of the stoker and his pals, and is enjoyed point, blade, and hilt.

Thrown together as the people are for a run only, you find little of the messmate kinship which is so strong in longer voyages among seafaring men. Should any one of them become unfit for work through sickness (and very ill he must be when the doctor excuses him from duty), his mates, the one he should have relieved and the other who would have relieved him, each stand two hours of his watch. But as the attendant abuse is great, and the curses are loud and deep and bitterly personal, no one, save a very hard case, will leave his work as long as he can stand up to it. As for kindness and usefulness, or any other saving grace, they are unknown; are, in the grim pessimism of this iron trade, never expected. It is a hard, hard life, measured by decent standards, and _messieurs_, when you stray below, and, as tradition demands, they “chalk you”—ring you about with the mystic circle which means drink-money—be sure the ransom is not niggard, be certain that with it you lend them from your brighter world the sunshine of a cheery greeting, the tonic of a friendly smile.

For, God help them, they need it always.

The inspection is finished a little after seven bells, and one by one the officers straggle on deck with their sextants. Should it be a fine day, with moderate weather, the noon observation for latitude is a simple one and is always sought; though, in the open, these people running in regular lanes can place great dependence on their engine revolutions, their well-tried compasses, and, if the speed is not excessive, upon their taffrail logs. When the sun crosses the meridian twelve o’clock is reported, and “eight bells are made” by the captain, for no lesser personage dare trifle with the astronomical proprieties hedging about this occult ceremony. The ship’s time, however, remains unaltered, until the clocks are corrected at midnight from calculations based upon the chronometer ticking stolidly in the chart-room. In the sweep of modern progress the sacred rite of heaving the log is no longer celebrated. The speed is now too great for that rough-and-ready hit-and-miss at distance run: and with its disuse, worse luck, a fund of old-time pleasant raillery has been eclipsed. “How fast are you going, my man?” was an invariable question of the inevitable, curious passenger to the Jackie walking away with the dripping log-line. “Fourteen and a Dutchman, sir,” would be his answer, or, if again pressed, “Thirteen and a marine,” he would reply, gravely, to the joy of his grinning shipmates and to the mystification of the questioner. But now no longer does the reel turn swift, no longer does the sand run dry, no more the chip dances on the waves or tugging line strain brawny muscles. To-day the speed is read off from a little cylinder which twists its dials on the weather rail.

The observations are worked out independently by the chief and second officers, and the former submits his results to the captain. Of course these calculations cannot have the exactness of astronomical work ashore, and luckily on the high sea this is not needed. On the contrary, over-precision often multiplies the error, and it is good navigation if you can say with assurance that the ship is anywhere within an enclosing circle five miles in diameter. Of course it is widely different when a vessel is running in for the land or coasting, for then the soundings, the cross-bearings of well-known marks, and the contour lines, enable the position to be marked with very great accuracy.

The noon position of the ship is—next to dinner—the great event of the day, and many are the pools and bets made on the figures of the run; not only as to the distance, but as to the probable time of arrival. For if the voyage be now half over, the novelty of sea life is at low ebb, and the passengers, save a few irrepressible spirits, have lapsed into a gentle melancholy induced by the monotony of water, water, water everywhere. They are tired of the sea, of the ship, of the cooking, of each other, in short, of everything, and are anxious only to arrive. They have divided and subdivided, and differentiated into cliques, and have nursed dislikes, usually founded on feminine fancies, until these have become mortal antipathies. In a perfunctory way they follow a routine which finally drags a lengthening chain. They get up and pitchfork on their clothes, and eat, lounge about, doze, muffled to the eyes, in lashed steamer chairs, read languidly, gossip spitefully, and eat, and eat, and eat, and then, wearied to bitter boredom, go to bed again. The men drink more than is good for them, indeed some of them have an eager and a nipping air all day long; and as for smoking, why, those who can are blowing moist and soggy weeds and fondling explosive pipes from morn till dewy eve. The noisy ones—and what nuisances they are with their aggressively robust health and unfailing cheerfulness—play all manner of stupid sea-games, horse-billiards, quoits, and shuffle-board, and sometimes venture upon such silly practical joking that you wish a sea would wash them overboard.

No one sees much of the ship’s officers except perhaps the ubiquitous purser and the amiable doctor, and how these two, harried and beset as they are by a hundred cares, by the little miseries of other people, can present an unfailing front of courtesy, can go smilingly and cheerily about their duties, is one of the sea mysteries yet unsolved. Blow high or low, and in fair weather or foul, they are ever the same, bright, beaming, optimistic, encouraging—“fresh as a garden rose, soothing as an upland wind”—and knowing the strain put upon you by silly men and fretful women, gentlemen, I salute you, _chapeau bas_.

In the beginning there was a struggle for seats at the captain’s table, and heartburnings are not unknown to those who sit a little lower at the feast. But these are not the wise or wary ones, not the tough and devilish sly travellers who know their bread will be best buttered by rallying around the purser or forming in hollow squares about the shrine where the doctor sits enthroned. The captain’s duties permit him to go below rarely save at dinner-time, and as for the other officers, they live and mess alone and are as cloistered, so far as the passengers count, as the preaching friars of Saint Dominic.

Once in every voyage boat drill is held, and sadly insufficient for the people on board is this same boat equipment. But the drill is usually a passably fair one, and, given time, adequate perhaps for any demands made upon the ship by outside distress. And let it be added that never yet, when the word has been given, have those gallant men who walk their watches so quietly and so uncomplainingly, been known to fail if succor were needed by helpless mariners. It may be that death stares them in the face, that their mission may be another tragedy, but they never question. Honor to them and to all the unrecorded heroes, the uncrowned martyrs of that western passage. Who may number them? who tell their gallant deeds? True descendants are they of those “who first went out across the unknown seas, fighting, discovering, colonizing, and graving out channels through which the commerce and enterprise of England have flowed out over all the world.”

You may count, as a rule, upon disagreeable weather in the Western Ocean, and this tries the temper of people who might be saints ashore; and, say what you will, even under the most promising environments, women are out of place on shipboard. However, if the days are reasonably pleasant as the voyage shortens, the monotony becomes so much a habit as to be no longer a burden. The little animosities which seemed eternal disappear, and friendships are made, and toward the end all but the hardened cases, the mental dyspeptics, or those to whom sea-sickness is a serious matter, really enjoy the voyage.

The tonic of the sea-air courses like an elixir in the blood: young women begin to take notice, and you hear rippling laughter, and see, in place of gloom, the sunshine of happy smiles. This is usually the season when the concert is given, and the uneasy spirits of the ship exploit the talent they have discovered. Usually there are a dozen mild rows over this performance, and invariably a great dispute as to the distribution of the money. This is apt to divide the ship temporarily into two warring camps, but in the end the ship’s officers have their way, and the American dollars jingle musically in English contribution boxes. More or less jollity is always afloat in the smoking-room, for here eddy the flotsam and jetsam of the ship. Here, too, the speculative gentlemen, their friends and lambs, usually play cards from early forenoon till the lights are turned out. There is not much growling among these industrious workmen, though at times when jack-pots go one way, and the kitty or widow is large enough to make the losers boisterously assertive, you may hear sharp words over the reckoning. As for those who enjoy a quiet rubber, they must find another retreat; the smoking-room is ruled by the gods of clamor.

And so the last days are apt to rush along pleasantly enough; the solitude cheered by passing vessels and the lazy routine of the ship enlivened by congenial companionships newly found. The edge of the Grand Banks is skirted happily without injury to the daring fishermen; the Georges are rounded, and then, oh, happy hour for many homesick hearts! the cry “Sail ho” rings out with newer meaning, and a graceful pilot-boat wings toward them like the fabled sea-bird. How they greet the bluff pilot, coming as he does to their seeming helplessness out of the known and the enduring. The speculative passengers find an especial interest in the incident, for no pools are more favored than those made on the number of the boat, no bets more frequent than whether the figures are odd or even. After the assurance that the “pilot is really on board” over-sanguine and inexperienced females madly rush below and pack their trunks and get ready for an immediate shore-flitting, afraid, perhaps, they will be late; but there is many and many a tossing mile yet to steam ere the services of the adventurous pilot will be needed.

Still, a new delight possesses everybody, and it grows as the hours fly, until at last, it may be at night, perhaps, some one bursts breathlessly into the crowded smoking-room or bar, and cries exultingly: “There she is, Fire Island Light, right over the starboard bow.” Joyous faces gather near the crowded bulwarks, and eager eyes hail with gladness the shining petals of that rose of flame which blossoms unfailingly above the shoaling waters; for the voyage is nearly over, and the morrow means to some the marvels of an unknown land, to others, luckiest and happiest of all, home and dear ones.

SAFETY ON THE ATLANTIC.

BY WILLIAM H. RIDEING.

THE DANGERS OF THE SEA—PRECAUTIONS IN A FOG—ANXIETIES OF THE
CAPTAIN—CREEPING UP THE CHANNEL—“ASHORE AT SOUTH STACK”—NARROW
ESCAPE OF THE BALTIC—SOME NOTABLE SHIPWRECKS—STATISTICS SINCE
1838—THE REGION OF ICEBERGS—WHEN THEY ARE MOST FREQUENT—CALAMITIES
FROM ICE—SAFETY PROMOTED BY SPEED—MODERN PROTECTION FROM INCOMING
SEAS—BULKHEADS AND DOUBLE BOTTOMS—WATER TIGHT COMPARTMENTS—THE
SPECIAL ADVANTAGE OF THE LONGITUDINAL BULKHEAD—THE VALUE OF TWIN
SCREWS—DANGERS FROM A BROKEN SHAFT—IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MARINER’S
COMPASS, THE PATENT LOG, AND SOUNDING MACHINE—MANGANESE BRONZE FOR
PROPELLERS—LIGHTS, BUOYS, AND FOG SIGNALS—THE REMARKABLE RECORD OF
1890.

It is not when the seas come pounding over the bows that the captain’s face lengthens. Even when it is necessary to keep the passengers below, and the spray is carried as high as the foretop, his confidence in his ship is unabated. His spirits do not fall with the barometer, and though the clouds hang low, and the air is filled with stinging moisture flying like sleet from the hissing sea—even when boats are torn out of the davits, and iron bitts and ventilators are snapped from their fastenings like pipe-stems, he has no misgiving as to the ability of the ship to weather the gale, or the fiercest hurricane that can blow.

Give him an open sea, without haze, or fog, or snow, and neither wind nor wave can alarm him. He knows very well, as all who are experienced in such matters do, that the modern steamers of the great Atlantic lines are so carefully constructed, and of such strength, that the foundering of one of them through stress of weather alone is well-nigh inconceivable.

But when a fog descends, then it is that his face and manner change, and he who has been the most sociable and gayest of men suddenly becomes the most anxious and taciturn. His seat at the head of the table is vacant; look for him and you will not find him, as in fair weather, diverting groups of girls tucked up in steamer-chairs on the promenade-deck, but pacing the bridge and puffing a cigar which apparently has not been allowed to go out since it was lighted as the big ship backed from her wharf into the North River.

Wherever and whenever it occurs, fog is a source of danger from which neither prudence nor skill can guarantee immunity: and whether the ship is slowed down or going at full speed, there is cause for fear while this gray blindness baffles the eyes. With plenty of sea-room the danger is least, and it increases near land, especially where the coast is wild and broken, like that of Ireland and Wales, and where there are many vessels as well as rocks to be passed.

Probably the captain dreads but one thing more than a fog which comes down when he is making land. When he can see the familiar lights and promontories, he can verify the position of the ship and check his daily observations of the sun. Then it is plain sailing into port. But when the strongest light is quenched and every well-known landmark is hidden, and he has to feel his way with only the compass and the sounding machine to guide him, the consciousness that a slight divergence from the proper course may lead to disaster, keeps him on the pins and needles of anxiety, and sears his brain to constant wakefulness, as with a branding-iron.

A startling experience may be recalled:

The ship had swept down from the “nor’ard” like an arrow following the curve of its own bow, and it was promised that we should see land early in the afternoon and reach Queenstown soon after sundown. The weather could not have been better; it was clear and mild, and the air, the water, and the sky were tinged with the silvery pinks and grays which often appear, like mother-of-pearl, in the atmospheric effects of that southern coast. Flocks of birds were resting on the surface of the calm sea and wheeling around the ship, the gulls swinging within arm’s length of the passengers leaning against the rail. We steamed in among a fleet of fishing-boats with red sails—close enough to hear the greetings of the men, and these voices made the assurance of land doubly sure.

Then it was whispered that land could be seen, and the searchers swept the eastern horizon with their glasses to find it. They made many mistakes about it, and explored the clouds, deluding themselves with the idea that forms of rosy vapor were the Kerry Mountains. They insisted upon it, but presently the coast defined itself to a certainty, coming out of the distance in bold masses of peak and precipice, fringed with a line of surf.

The captain was in his gayest mood. The baggage of the passengers for Queenstown was whipped out of the hold by the steam winch and piled up on the main deck, and they themselves were smartly dressed to go ashore. Already farewells were spoken and reunions planned. We could see the black-fanged pyramids of the Blaskets, and the mountain-bound sweep of Bantry Bay. Fastnet would soon be visible over the starboard bow—perhaps the men in the foretop could already see it—and a little to the northward of that lay Brow Head, whence in an hour or so our safe arrival would be flashed in an instant under the capricious sea which we had just crossed.

These were our anticipations, but they were not fulfilled. The strong, piercing light of Fastnet did not reach us that night, nor any glimpse of the splendid beacons which blaze, each in its own distinctive way, for the guidance of the mariner along that Channel. We were not seen from Brow Head, and the passengers for Queenstown did not go ashore.

The captain’s manner changed again from its wonted gayety to severe silence. Before it was noticed on deck, those on the bridge discovered, rolling down the Channel, a reddish-brown fog, like a cloud from a battle-field, which swallowed everything in its path—fishing-boats and all vessels in sight; mountains, cliffs, and surf: every light and every landmark. In half an hour it had enveloped us and washed out with its sepia all the pearly iridescence which had filmed the sea. Nothing definite remained; all became vague, spectral, curtailed. The heart of the ship seemed to cease beating, and then could be heard only in faint throbs as the engine was slowed down.

For the rest of the night everything was dubious. The passengers gathered in knots on the wet decks, talking in undertones. You could hear the swash of the becalmed sea along the sides of the ship in the intervals of the blasts of the fog-horn, which pierced the ear like a knife; it was only when that demon was raging that the other sounds which had become familiar on board the ship were not more acute—the hum of the forced draft, the asthma of escaping steam, the voices on the bridge, and the whirr of the bell in the engine-room. The bell had been silent since it rang out, “Turn ahead, full speed!” when the pilot was picked up by the station boat of Sandy Hook, but now the hand which recorded its messages was constantly going from side to side of the clock-faced dial. At every stroke a fresh apprehension thrilled along the deck and imaginary shapes loomed up in the fog, the rumors were wild and contradictory, no sooner spoken than discredited. See that blur of yellow ahead! That must be a light—Queenstown, perhaps, and the tender coming alongside. Yes, the bell has rung “Stop her!” Half of the passengers can see the blur of yellow, half are not quite certain—all are mistaken: the light burns only in their imaginations. Then they see the sails of a ship blotted on the fog; they hear bells and whistles; they listen for confirmation from the bridge. Little wonder that they are confused: the engine-room bell tells a different story every few minutes—now “Ahead!” then “Astern!” now “Full speed!” then “Dead slow!” Again the engine stops altogether; in a minute or two the churnings of the screw, sweeping toward the bow instead of in the wake, show that the ship is backing, and the fear of reefs, of collision, of running ashore, deepens the silence of the anxious groups along the rail.

The escaping steam roars out of the copper-pipes riveted to the funnel; louder and shriller the whistle drives its warning through the obscurity which surrounds us. Then we move “Ahead!” once more, and at midnight all hope of seeing Queenstown is abandoned. The passengers retreat to their cabins, and the decks are left to the sailors and the officers, who come in and out of the ghostly atmosphere—their oil-skins dripping with moisture and shining momentarily in the lamp-light. Never for an instant does the captain leave the bridge; his cigar feeds its bluish wreaths to the fog; he watches the glowing face of the compass, and listens to the cry of the men who are working the sounding machine.

So the great ship creeps up the Channel. Once in a while an answering blast is borne over the water, a bell is heard tolling afar, but never a thing is in sight. It is a weary night for the captain, but in the morning all is clear; we are off Holyhead; the pulse of the engine has recovered its regularity; the faces of the passengers are beaming, and Snowdon is visible over the starboard bow, piled up in white vapor.

The navigation of the Channel in foggy weather can never be free from danger, and more fine steamers of the great transatlantic lines have been lost between Fastnet and Liverpool through fogs than through any other cause. It was only last summer that the City of Rome ran in a dense fog against Fastnet itself—that perilous, shore-less, horn-shaped rock which stands in the direct pathway of all ingoing and outgoing ships—and barely escaped destruction. A few years earlier, when the Cunarder Aurania was approaching land in a fog, the passengers who were smoking their after-dinner cigars suddenly saw looming above them, and above the topmasts, the cliffs which were supposed to be many miles away. The captain was far out of his reckoning, but was going so slowly that he was able to back into the Channel with slight damage. A similar accident to this happened to the White Star steamer Baltic when she was proceeding up the Channel to Liverpool.

One of the most brilliant lights in the Channel is that of the South Stack, which lies under the flank of the mountainous precipice of Holyhead. The Stack is an egg of rock, much higher and much bolder than Fastnet, which has become detached from the main-land, and its apex is crowned with the white tower and crouching buildings of the lighthouse keepers. The sea is eating it away, and has already scooped out a vast cavern which they call the Parliament Hall. It is wider and loftier than any chamber at Westminster, and there is more justification for its name in the babble of the sea-birds flitting in and out of it than in its dimensions. From the foot of it to the low, white wall which encircles the light, it is a sheer precipice of dark, exfoliating rock, forbidding and hopeless, without a resting-place for any living thing less secure than the birds, which cluster like beads on a string upon the edges of the shale. The sea frets itself around it and gurgles in the cavern; ledges and reefs abut on it. All vessels aim to give it a wide berth, and usually keep at such a distance that a glass has to be used to discover its destructive points. To say “ashore at South Stack” is as good as to say a “total wreck.” There is hardly one chance in a hundred that the luckless ship which strikes here will live.

(Tower about one hundred feet high.)]

The Baltic was feeling her way up the Channel, and was supposed to be two or three miles off-shore. The creaming of the breakers, flowing and dissolving over the ledges like puffs of steam, gave the first hint of danger, and before the warning was of avail, the dark shape, darker than the fog, sprang upon the dimmed vision of those on deck—a precipice that seemed to be toppling over them. “Good God! It is the South Stack!” a voice cried out, and there was no thought but of doom. The bells in the engine-room and wheel-house pealed, and the reversal of the screw sent the latherings surging toward the bow. A moment of panic among the passengers; a scurrying of figures on the bridge; the resonant, pistol-like snap of bending iron plates; a sudden resistance to progress suddenly withdrawn—a confusion of ideas, a murmur of relief, comparative tranquillity again. The hundredth chance was in favor of the Baltic, and backing into deep water, she proceeded on her way to Liverpool.

The three accidents described were without serious consequences, but in most cases the same difficulty of fog and mistaken reckoning ends in disaster. No less than five large steamers of the Guion line have been wrecked between Fastnet and Liverpool—the Chicago, the Colorado, the Montana, the Dakota, and the Idaho—representing a value of fully two and a half million dollars, without cargo. The Cunard line lost the Tripoli on the Irish coast, north of Queenstown, and the City of New York (the first Inman ship of that name) came to grief on Daunt’s Rock, near Roche’s Point. The City of Brussels, of the same line, had nearly completed her voyage and was lying off the Liverpool bar, waiting for the weather to clear, the captain acting with the utmost prudence, when an insufficiently manned and badly managed steamer, the Kirby Hall, ran her down and sank her. Account is taken here only of the passenger steamers of the well-known lines; the record would be much expanded if it included the disasters to freight lines, and to those uncared-for ocean tramps which when they go down often yield a better profit to their unscrupulous owners, through insurance money, than they do by carrying cargo while afloat.

From 1838, when the Sirius crossed the ocean, till 1879, one hundred and forty-four steamers, counting all classes, were lost in the transatlantic trade. The first was the President, which disappeared mysteriously in 1841. During the thirteen years following only one life was lost by the wreck of an Atlantic steamer, that steamer being the Cunarder Columbia, which went ashore in 1843. In 1854, however, the City of Glasgow sailed with about four hundred and eighty souls on board, and was never seen or heard from again; and in the same year the Collins line steamer Arctic, one of the fastest and finest vessels then afloat, was sunk in collision with the steamer Vesta during a dense fog, off Cape Race, and five hundred and sixty-two persons perished. Two years later the Pacific, of the same line, went to sea with one hundred and eighty-six persons on board, and was never heard from again. Between 1857 and 1864 the Allan line lost no fewer than nine steamers. In 1858 the Hamburg-American steamer Austria was burned at sea, with a loss of four hundred and seventy-one lives; in 1870 the City of Boston left port with over two hundred persons on board, never more to be heard from. On a dark night in April, 1873, the White Star steamer Atlantic ran ashore near Sambro, and five hundred and sixty lives were lost—some by drowning and some by freezing in the rigging into which they had scrambled, or upon the ice-bound shore upon which they were cast. Note must be made also of the wreck of the German steamer Schiller on the Scilly Rocks, by which two hundred lives were lost; of the running ashore in the North Sea of the North German Lloyd steamer Deutschland, by which one hundred and fifty-seven lives were lost; of the sinking through collision of the Hamburg-American steamer Pomerania, by which over fifty lives were lost; of a similar disaster to the Cimbria, of the same line, by which eighty-four were lost; and of yet another collision, which sent the beautiful Ville du Havre, of the French line, to the bottom of the English Channel, with two hundred and thirty of her passengers and crew.

Of the one hundred and forty-four vessels lost up to 1879, more than one-half were wrecked. Twenty-four never reached the ports for which they sailed, their fate still being unknown; ten were burned at sea; eight were sunk in collisions, and three were sunk by ice.

Since 1879, the most memorable disasters, besides those already referred to, have been the burning at sea of the Egypt, of the National line, and the City of Montreal, of the Inman line, both without loss of life; the stranding of the State of Virginia, of the State line, on the quicksands of Sable Island, which quickly entombed her; the sinking of the State of Florida, of the same line, by collision with a sailing ship; the disappearance of the National line steamer Erin, which is supposed to have foundered at sea; and the sinking of the magnificent Cunarder Oregon in collision with a coal schooner, off Fire Island.

No line in existence has been wholly free from calamity; no line in existence has not at least one page in its history to tell of anxious crowds besieging its wharves and offices for news of a ship that has never come in.

One speculates in vain as to the end of those ships which, sailing from port in a seaworthy condition, have disappeared without leaving a survivor to record their fate. Was it fire that consumed, or ice that crushed, or seas that swallowed them? It may have been collision in a fog, or an explosion of the boilers, or the collapse of the engine, or the bursting on board of some tremendous wave from which recovery has been impossible. Possibly boats and rafts have been lowered, and when the ship herself has sunk, there has still been hope of reaching land; days of suffering; glimpses of passing ships that have failed to see; agony spun out, and death at the end. For all the patient waiting and listening of those ashore no whisper of the secret has come, and no fuller account can be written than the word “missing.”

The region of fogs on the Atlantic is also the region of ice; fog and ice together are a greater source of peril than fog alone is, even when a ship is making land. Under the latter condition there is the chance of hearing the warning voice of the “syren,” the reverberation of the signal gun, or the tolling of the fog-bell; steam “syrens,” guns, or explosives of some kind, and bells, are all used as auxiliaries to the lighthouses in overcoming, through the medium of sound, the difficulties which fog opposes against the transmission of light. The sounding machine comes into play, and by registering the depth of water, and bearing testimony to the character of the bottom, affords further protection to the navigator. But the shoals and islands of ice, which, with their outreaching, submerged spurs, come drifting down from the Arctic into the track of the transatlantic steamers, are unprovided with anything which might tell the ship bearing upon them in thick weather of their proximity. Sometimes they may be detected by the echo from the whistle or fog-horn, and by the rapid lowering of the temperature of the water in their vicinity. These signs cannot be always counted on, however. The whistle may be going every twenty or thirty seconds, and the quartermaster posted to the leeward with the little canvas bag and the thermometer with which the sea is tested for temperature; all due precaution may be taken, and yet no warning come of the ice that is ahead. On a clear night a berg rising above the horizon will have the effulgence of a star; on a clear day it will notch the horizon with its dazzling whiteness; in a fog it looms up in the gray like a shadow upon a shadow, and is invisible till the ship is close upon it.

The Hydrographic Bureau at Washington, which is in many ways useful in transatlantic navigation, issues a series of charts of an area of ocean reaching eastward from Newfoundland. There are twelve of them, one for each month of the year, and they differ only in certain pencillings which vary from month to month. Let us examine the set issued for a recent year. In the chart for January five little pyramids are clustered together in the sea, with a sixth to the north of them; in February the pyramidal little figures can be counted by the score, surrounded by zig-zag lines—they look like an encampment; in March the zig-zag lines have disappeared, and the tents, so to speak, are more scattered; in April they are much the same as in March, but in May they have increased enormously and can be counted by the hundred, reaching from the far north to over a hundred miles southward of the Grand Banks. In June they are fewer, and in July fewer still. In August only about twenty are visible; in September not more than ten; in October two, in November one, and in December two. The zig-zag lines disappear earlier than the pyramids; the former represent field-ice, the latter ice-bergs; and thus it is seen that during one year there was not a single month in which the transatlantic route was entirely free from danger from those sources. In 1882 the bergs appeared in February and disappeared in August; February, March, and April are the months for their appearance, and they often linger till October or November.

Field-ice has its source in the Arctic basin and along the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland, and is carried south either by the current from the Arctic or that from East Greenland. Fully eighty per cent. of the bergs have their origin in West Greenland, and most of them are fragments of glaciers, broken off in a process known as “calving,” as the glaciers slide into the deep water along-shore. Thousands are thus set adrift each year, and once adrift they begin their journey southward. Only a small proportion of the whole number ever reach the track of the steamers; some ground in the Arctic basin and break up in the frigid zone, to which they properly belong; they are very fragile, and the concussion of a gunshot is occasionally sufficient to shatter them; some are borne across from Greenland to Labrador, and lodge there until they dissolve, or crumble to pieces with the noise of thunder. The journey of those that escape disintegration in the north is slow. If they drifted directly south and met with no obstructions, they would be four or five months in reaching the transatlantic routes; and being liberated in July and August they would consequently beset the path of the steamers in December and January. Few of them, however, are not delayed, and most of them have been adrift at least a year from the time of “calving” before they arrive south enough to trouble the steamers. Some are several years in making the journey; they are held for a season in a shallow; locked up during the Arctic winter; released with the return of summer; caught again for another winter, and when once again liberated, retarded in their southward course by the necessity of ploughing through the field-ice before them. Not only are there wide variations in the date of the appearance and disappearance of the bergs in the transatlantic routes from year to year, but in different years they reach a different southern limit. It is this variability which causes mischief. If their movements were always the same, it would be easy for the captain to choose a course which would avoid them, but a course which may be entirely safe one year is often beset the next season by large quantities of ice, both in the forms of bergs and of field-ice.

The list of calamities from ice is a long one. It was only a few years ago that the Arizona, when going full speed, crashed into a berg and stove in her bows. From her stem to a point about thirty feet aft nothing remained of her but a tangle of shapeless iron, and that she did not sink immediately was due to the smoothness of the sea and the strength of her forward bulkhead, which withstood the pressure of the water and enabled her to reach St. Johns, Newfoundland. In the records of the Hydrographic Office it appears that, from 1882 to 1890, thirty-six steamers were more or less injured by ice in the North Atlantic, though some of these were freighting and coastwise vessels, and not of the class to which this article particularly refers; and the commonest explanation offered of the fate of the missing ships is collision with ice in fog or in the darkness of night.

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Having come to this point, the reader is probably of the opinion that the heading of this chapter is a mistake, but the reverse of the picture has yet to be shown. Notwithstanding all the peril from fog and ice, and from the fury of cyclones and hurricanes, the steamers of the transatlantic lines are so staunchly built and so capably handled, that a man is less likely to meet with accidents on board one of them than he would be in walking the streets of a crowded city. Never before have so many passengers been carried as are carried now. The ships that were regarded as leviathans fifteen or sixteen years ago are as yachts compared with more recent additions to the various fleets. Scarcely more than ten years have elapsed since sixteen knots was the maximum speed; now it is twenty knots, with the certainty of an almost immediate increase to twenty-one or twenty-two knots. The tonnage has been increased within the same period from a maximum of five thousand to ten thousand five hundred, and while ten years ago two hundred cabin passengers were as many as any steamer could accommodate with a reasonable degree of comfort on one voyage, it is not uncommon now to find over five hundred as the complement of one steamer. When steamers of sixteen and seventeen knots were built, it was said that they were too large and too fast, and that they would surely come to grief, but experience has proved them to be as safe as any. In fact, those who are best qualified to know, declare that the augmentation of speed promotes safety.

This point was fully discussed by the captains of the principal lines not long ago, and the opinions expressed were almost unanimously in favor of the faster ships. They not only diminish the period of exposure to such dangers as there may be in the transatlantic voyage, but from the superior power of their engines and boilers they are better fitted for overcoming those dangers. They are able to escape from areas of fog and storm sooner than slower vessels, and are more easily handled in thick and in heavy weather. From the rapidity with which they can be manœuvred, they can avoid collisions which would be inevitable under some conditions with slower ships; if a collision becomes unavoidable their impetus enables them to cut the obstructing vessel in two with comparatively little injury to themselves.

It is not conceivable that the element of danger can ever be wholly eliminated from the navigation of the Atlantic, but notwithstanding the extent and difficulty of the traffic, and the size and speed of the ships, which, flying to and fro in all kinds of weather, arrive in port at all seasons with a promptness and regularity quite equal to that of express trains on land, the number of accidents in proportion to the number of passengers is constantly diminishing. More cabin passengers are carried from New York to European ports in one summer now than were carried in the whole of the first quarter of a century of steam navigation on this ocean; but while the latter period was full of disasters, such as the loss of the Arctic with four hundred and sixty-two lives, and the loss of the Austria, with four hundred and seventy-one lives, we now see hundreds of thousands of passengers crossing, with a sense of security which a remarkable record of immunity from accident fully justifies.

The improvements in the character of the accommodations have not been greater than the improvements designed to reduce the dangers of the transatlantic trip to a minimum; they are found in the structure of the hulls, the engines, and the boilers; in the apparatus of navigation; in the numbers and discipline of the crews, and in the appliances for life-saving, such as rafts and life-boats. The old ships of twenty years and more ago were built on the lines of sailing vessels, and a poop extended with scarcely a break from the fo’c’s’le to the quarter-deck. When a sea came on board it was held as in a sluice between the high bulwarks and the poop, swashing fore and aft with the pitch of the ship, until it drained off through the scuppers. Most of the state-rooms were then situated below the main deck, and after such a sea they were likely to be flooded; many old passengers will remember how frequent an occurrence it was to find their cabins inundated. This was the least mischief it did, and when several seas were shipped in rapid succession, the vessel was in danger of foundering. The modern steamer is much better protected from incoming seas, and the main deck is completely covered in, instead of the bulwarks there is a simple rail and netting, and any water shipped flows overboard as quickly as it comes on board.

But the greatest improvement of all in the direction of safety is the system of bulkheads and double bottoms introduced by the builders of the City of New York and the City of Paris. For many years past it has been the custom to divide all steamers by transverse bulkheads into so-called water-tight compartments, the purpose of which is to increase their buoyancy and stability in case of collision. The Etruria, the Umbria, the Britannic, the Germanic, and the Arizona have nine compartments each. Excellent as the theory is, the feeling of everybody acquainted with the subject has been distrustful of the manner of its application, the chief objection being the inadequacy of the number of subdivisions. Sometimes, as when the Arizona ran into the iceberg, the bulkheads have saved the ship, but in other cases they have been of little or no use, as in the case of the Oregon. The Oregon was divided into ten compartments, but she sank in a few hours after her collision with a coal schooner off Fire Island light. The compartments have invariably proved useless when the ship has been struck amidships with sufficient force to open her engine and boilers to the sea, though when the weather has been calm and the injury forward or astern, they have kept her afloat.

The insufficiency of their number in proportion to the size of the ships has not been their only defect, moreover. In order to give an unobstructed passage along the decks it has been the custom to cut doors in the bulkheads, and it has frequently happened that in the confusion following a collision these have been left open, allowing the sea to rush from compartment to compartment, either because they were forgotten or because they refused to work.

In the newest type of ship, as represented by the City of Paris and the City of New York, there are no fewer than twenty water-tight compartments separated by solid transverse bulkheads, which rise from the keel to the saloon deck, eighteen feet above the waterline, and which have no doors or openings of any kind whatever. A few feet from the stem there is a collision bulkhead of extraordinary strength to protect the ship, should she run “bow-on” against any obstacle—a reef, a derelict, or a vessel attempting to cross her path; next, aft of this come three compartments for steerage passengers or cargo; then two compartments for saloon passengers; then four compartments for boilers, coal bunkers, kitchens, and machinery; two more for saloon passengers; one for second-cabin passengers, and two, those farthest aft of all, for steerage passengers or cargo. Each compartment is thus isolated, and only by a blow in the line of the dividing bulkhead could two compartments be flooded at once; the bulkheads also serve in case of fire to prevent the flames from spreading.

Still another safeguard becomes possible through the adoption of the twin screw. The propellers are worked by two complete and entirely independent sets of boilers and engines, and these are separated by a longitudinal bulkhead in addition to the transverse bulkheads already described. In a single-screw ship this longitudinal bulkhead is impossible, and the space in which her engine and boilers are situated is her most vulnerable point; if she is struck there with sufficient force to make a fissure large enough to admit any considerable quantity of water, nothing will save her from sinking. In the case of the twin-screw ship, however, we have had the best of evidence, within the past two years, that with one of her engine-rooms flooded and open to the sea, she will still float and be navigable.

For many years past the value of the twin screw has been debated by the builders, the managers, the captains, and the engineers of the great transatlantic lines, to whom it did not commend itself so readily as to the Admiralty. It was adopted for war-ships several years before any of the well-known passenger lines ventured to use it, and its first appearance in this service was in the City of New York, four years ago. Since then it has been adopted by the White Star and the Hamburg-American lines, and though the North German Lloyd has not yet applied it to the recent accessions to its fleet, its advantages over the single screw for passenger vessels, as well as for war-ships, are more generally conceded now than ever before. The Admiralty adopted it for the security it afforded, and for its superior capacity for rapid manœuvring. Another feature which recommends it is that, should one of the two sets of engines become disabled from the breaking of the shaft, or any other cause, the opposite engine would be equal to taking the ship into port; while a similar accident on a single-screw ship would compel her to make port under sail (a very difficult feat with the modern type of ocean steamers), or to wait for another steamer to take her in tow.

(Lighted by electric buoys.)]

Until quite recently, the breaking of the shaft was more frequent than any other kind of accident to the transatlantic steamers. When, perhaps, the ship was sailing along at full-speed, a jar would come and shake her from end to end, as though a rock or a submerged wreck had been struck. The engine would rattle and the sails flap loosely in the wind, and the familiar tremor of propulsion change to a softer heaving motion, like that of a sailing vessel. When the accident occurred in darkness and a gale, it was more alarming than in daylight and a calm sea. After a few minutes of uncertainty the news would fly that the shaft was broken, and that the captain and the chief engineer were consulting in the engine-room. Then would come days, and sometimes weeks, of drifting, with a corresponding and ever-increasing alarm on shore as the ship became overdue. Under favorable circumstances some headway could be made with sails, and occasionally the disabled vessel reached port without assistance. Oftener, however, she would drift helplessly in the vacant sea until she was sighted by another steamer powerful enough to tow her. Left to herself, she was in danger of falling into the trough of the sea and foundering, and near land she was exposed to the perils of a strong current and a lee-shore. Arriving in port, a claim for salvage was sure to be presented against her, and in some instances the amount awarded was as much as thirty thousand pounds.

A broken shaft is still a disagreeable possibility, but if one of the two shafts in a twin-screw ship breaks, the other, as with the engines, remains to avert complete disablement.

An ingenious device has lately been patented to prevent a repetition of one of the most serious of recent disasters, which was caused by the wearing away of the bracket upon which rests the final bearing of the shaft. As this bracket is, in the largest ships, fully sixty feet from the stuffing-box, a new danger is created from the fact that it is far outside the hull and out of sight of the engineers. The invention referred to consists simply of a couple of completely insulated wires, positive and negative, connected by a battery, an indicator, and an alarm-bell in the engine-room. The wires run under the shaft out through the stuffing-box, and through the casing which protects the shaft from the sea; then they enter the bracket, where they turn from the horizontal to the perpendicular, and terminate about three-quarters of an inch from the surface of the bearing. Should the surface wear away so as to imperil the shaft, the latter would instantly come in contact with the ends of the wires, the insulation would be broken, the current closed, and the alarm-bell rung. Then, of course, the engine would be stopped until an examination could be made.

Though it promotes safety and is winning favor, the twin screw has been applied so far only to the City of Paris, the City of New York, the Teutonic, the Majestic, the Columbia, the Normannia, the Fürst Bismarck, and the Augusta-Victoria. Credit for the infrequency of broken shafts does not belong wholly to this device, therefore, but in a much larger measure to the substitution of steel for iron and other improvements in the form and materials of the marine engine.

The City of New York and the City of Paris are also provided with double bottoms, so that, should the outer skin be torn, the inner one would still exclude the sea; and the efficacy of oil in calming the troubled waters has been so well established that apparatus for its distribution is placed in the bows. The number of officers and seamen has been augmented, so that the staff of navigating officers now comprises the captain, the chief officer, two second officers, two third officers, and two fourth officers. Great improvements have also been made in the mariner’s compass and in the patent log and sounding machine. The latter can be used when the ship is going at a high rate of speed, and it records not only the depth of water but the character of the bottom, which is nearly always a clue to the position of the ship when other signs fail. Had these instruments been less perfect, we could not have made our way, with so little delay, past Fastnet and up the Channel to Holyhead, when the fog descended as we were making land.

Still another improvement is in the material of which the propellers are cast. In the new ships it is manganese bronze, which has nearly double the strength of steel and is practically unbreakable.

Sixteen or seventeen years ago the principal lines began to adopt the system of “steam lanes” originally suggested by Professor M. F. Maury, as long ago as 1855—that is, to prescribe definite courses for their steamers, based on calculations as to probable areas of fog and ice. In following these fixed courses the steamers pass each other at an hour and a point on the ocean which can be foretold almost to a certainty, and should one of them meet with an accident, there is every probability that succor will reach her through one of her companion ships.