Unless passengers, at the risk of being snubbed and
threatened, criticise the boat accommodation of great steamers, there
will be such a disaster one day as will make the world shudder.
The pitiful thing is to know how easily all this might be prevented.
Until one has been on board a small vessel which has every spar, bolt,
iron, and plank sound, one can have no idea how perfectly safe a
perfectly-built ship is in any sort of weather. A schooner of one
hundred and fifty tons was caught in a hurricane which was so powerful
that the men had to hang on where they could, even before the flattened
foaming sea rose from its level rush and began to come on board. All
round were vessels in distress; the scare caused many of the seamen to
forget their lights, and the ships lumbered on, first to collision, and
then to that crashing plunge which takes all hands down. The little
schooner was actually obliged to offer assistance to a big
mail-steamer--and yet she might have been rather easily carried by that
same steamer. But the little vessel's lights were watched with sedulous
care; the blasts might tear at her scanty canvas, but there was not a
rag or a rope that would give way; and, although the awful rush of the
gale carried her within eight miles of a rocky lee-shore, her captain
had sufficient confidence in the goodness of his gear to begin sailing
his ship instead of keeping her hove to.
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