Part 30

The first step towards a remedy for this state of things is to inquire into the causes of shipwreck. There can be little hesitation in naming Marine Insurance as the chief destroyer. Unseaworthiness and overloading of vessels; their being ill found in anchors, cables, sails, and rigging; defects of compasses, want of good charts, incompetency of masters, may all be attributed to this source. If the shipowners were not guaranteed from loss, they would take care that their vessels were seaworthy, commanded by qualified persons, and furnished with every necessary store. The terms of the insurance, moreover, offer a direct premium to create in all cases of casualty a "total loss." For instance, a ship strikes the ground and becomes damaged, but, under able management, might be got off and repaired. In this case, however, the assured has to bear one third part of the loss; whereas, if the loss is total, he gets the whole of his insurance. Under these circumstances, even when there is no deliberate desire to perpetrate a wrong, the captain will leave the ship to her fate instead of using his energies to preserve her to the detriment of his employer. It is the opinion of many that if the insurers were to agree to pay the whole insurance, whether the damaged vessel were got off or not, that we should see a marked diminution in the list of total losses at sea, for the natural inclination of the captain to save his ship would then no longer be counterbalanced by his desire to save the pocket of the owner.

There is a class of casualties, however, which are the product of villany, against which we see no protection excepting in the vigilance of the insurers: we refer to those cases of wilful casting away, which are not unknown even in this country, as the late trial of a captain, at the Old Bailey, will testify; but which are most frequent on the Florida Reef. It is notorious that our American friends are in the habit of sailing ships into these waters, with the deliberate intention of steering them to destruction. So well is this known, that those on shore can predict, with tolerable accuracy, from the handling of the vessel, whether she is about to be sunk or not. When it is not the skipper's interest to lose his craft, he will allow the wreckers, who swarm as plentifully as sharks in those waters, to act as pilots, and to put the ship in dangerous positions for the purpose of making a claim for salvage, which the swindling captain shares with them. In the years 1854, 1855, and 1856, 189 ships were either lost or put into Key West. The salvage upon the latter class amounted to 298,400·05 dollars, a large portion of which was, without doubt, obtained by fraud. It is far from our purpose to insinuate that the Americans are worse than their neighbours in this particular; had the English the same opportunity, there would always be found persons to enter upon similar practices. The memory of wrecking is not yet extinct in Cornwall, and only a few years since it was notorious that the pilots of the Downs were in the habit of recommending the cables of the vessels in their charge to be slipped in very moderate gales of wind, because these worthies had a good understanding with the chain and anchor makers of the neighbouring ports who would have to supply fresh tackle.

It must be admitted, that the same cause which prompts these villanies, 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."