THE ATALANTA.

(Saturday Review )

Some traces of this vessel, real and not forged— aa the inscriptions in the bottle and on the oar-blade probably are—may yet be discovered ; but it is by no means certain that, if discovered, they will give any clue towards ascertaining the cause of her loss. It may be utterly impossible to gather from such wreckage as is likely to be found the smallest knowledge of the circumstances under which the vessel went down, and certainly it will tell nothing respecting the place of the catastrophe, aa it will necessarily have drifted far. In all probability the loss of the Atalanta will remain an unsolved mystery, and a variety of opinions respecting it will be held with that confidence which is always shown where nothing certain can ever bo known. Although, however, certainty, or any approach to certainty, with regard to this calamity is at present hopeless, and seems likely to remain so, some facts are now known on which a reasonable conjecture as to its possible cause maybe mad«, Jnfof nation of oonfid«r«ble value

respecting the Atalanta has recently been published, and from a consideration of this, and of the remarks of a writer in the 1 'Nautical Magazine, "who obviously is well acquainted with that part of the ocean in which the training-ship was lost, we propose to 3how that there are grounds for a surmise respecting the cause of her loss. The information to which we have referred was contained in a brief account of the Atalanta's commission in 1853-58, when the late Captain Stephen Fremantle commanded her. This account is appa rently the work of two naval officers who were in her during the whole of this period. Two men are likely to tell a story at greater length than one, and in this case the writers might certainly have been more concise with ad vantage. They have thought it necessary to give a description of the places the vessel visited, forgetting that these are now far better known than they were at the time when the Atalanta—or rather the Juno, to call her by the name she then bore—sailed in the Australian seas and the Pacific, and have been told of in many books of travel. The reader, who, it may be presumed, is anxious to learn something of the qualities of the ship which has beon so lamentably lost, has to wade through an account of the Pitcairn Islanders, the Polynesians, and the aborigines of Australia, which no doubt is accurate enough, but contains scarcely anything that is not familiar to all who have paid the smallest attention to the literature of travel. All that is really pertinent in this prolix narrative may be very briefly summed up as follows :—The Juno sailed from England in 1854, and went round the Cape to Zanzibar and Muscat. After leaving the latter place she had, when on her way to the Kooria Mooria Islands, to beat to windward against a gale, and, according to the opinion of all on board, behaved admirably. From the islands she went to Bombay, and thence to Sydney. ller commander became senior officer on the Australian station, and during a period of some three years she made many voyages in the Pacific and went to Java. In 1858 Captain Fremantle was relieved by Captain Loring in the Iris, and the Juno sailed round Cape Horn to England, arriving in November 1858. It need scarcely be said that during her commission of nearly five years, in the course of which she Bailed round the world, doubling both capes, there must have been opportunities innumerable of judging the vessel's behaviour in gales and heavy seas. On this point the writers in " Land and Water" are fortunately explicit, when at the end of their long story they at last state what is really interesting. They say :-" The Juno was paid off at Portsmouth in December of the same year. [1858], after a most eventful commission on a. stormy, roughweather station, and it may be safely said few ships have experienced a more tempestuous one, and none could have weathered it better. The ship on all occasions behaved admirably, every one on board having the greatest confidence in her capabilities to withstand the force of any wind or weather that could be brought against her." They also state that, in a tremendous sea which was encountered when rounding the south point of N«w Zealand, the " gallant little ship " behaved "as heretofore," that is, extremely well. This evidence respecting the Atalanta, coming as it does from sailors who were in her during so very long a time, carries the greatest weight, and it should be remembered that it exactly coincides with that of other officers who knew the Atalanta at the same time when she was a frigate. We are able ourselves to corroborate to some extent the statement of the writer in "Land and Water," having had three years' experience of a Symondite frigate of almost precisely the same size as the Juno, and closely resembling her. This vessel, thcjugh faulty in some respects, was admirable in a heavy sea; labouring but little, and steering easily when the management of the helms of other vessels was a very difficult matter. It may be held as tolerably clear that the Atalanta was a good and safe ship in a sea, and the self-contradic-tory statements which have been published as the " evidence" of some ordinary seamen who were lately on board her may be altogether disregarded. A vessel which is easy in a sea may, however, be capsized by a sadden gust of wind, and it has been frequently suggested that this was the fate of the Atalanta. On this point one of the writsrs of the account is able to give information which is of the greatest value, He saw a vessel of the same construction hove down. " When down to 76deg.,"he says, " with her keel three feet out of the water, the masthead purchase block strops carried away, and there was no mistake about the spring up to her upright position when released; the blocks were afterwards stropped with her breeching hawser, and she was then hove down to 78 degrees, the hardest heave being the last few degrees. Everything was cleared out of the ship—she was a mere BhelL" This fact certainly shows in a marvellous manner the stability of form of these vessels ; and it need hardly be said that the capsizing of a ship of this kind is a most remote contingency. It could only happen if the main deck ports were left open, as in the case of the Eurydice, or if the ship were thrown absolutely on her beam-ends and stopped in that position long enough for large quantities of water to enter through the upper deck hatchways. We should add that the Atalanta was even safer from capsizing than she had been when called the Juno. When she was commissioned as a training-ship her masts were shortened by some six ot ■even feet, and additional water-tanks were put into her. It may therefore be presumed, without any great assumption, that the loss of this vessel was not due to her capsizing or to her bad qualities in a sea. The supposition that she had not able seamen enough to handle her, which has been boldly put forward, may be dismissed as ridiculous. The authors of the article in " Land and Water " treat it with just contempt, and the writer in the "Nautical Magazine " pertinently observes that " a merchant ship of her tonnage would be considered well manned with 24 hands, all told," and that the Atalanta had a complement of 44 able Beamen, which number was certainly increased during her run in the West Indies. This writer, who is apparently a merchant captain of long experience, also dismisses the supposition that she got into a high Northern latitude and drifted into the ice, pointing out that Captain Stirling had every reason for keeping to the southward and for not taking a course which " not only sailing ships, but steamers when possible, avoid in winter." After thus dealing with one conjecture respecting the ship, the writer proceeds to indicate the possible causes of her loss. She may, he thinks, have come into collision with a dismasted wreck, or may have been taken by the lee in one of the furious revolving gales which are not uncommon in that part of the ocean which she had to traverse. The first danger is, no doubt, a very serious one ; and the loss of the Atalanta may, as is suggested, have been caused by collision with the hull of a timber ship, scarcely more than awash, and therefore not easily seen. It must not be forgotten, however, that, owing to the extremely careful look-out which is kept, men-of-war run far les3 risks of collisions of this kind than other vessels, and that, by all accounts, Captain Stirling was the last man to neglect any possible precaution. With regard to the other danger, the writer in the " Nautical Magazine " gives his own experience, describing in a forcible and graphic manner what befel him when homeward-bound from Baltimore. When the vessel was near the 44th degree of west latitude, a breeze from the south-east which had sprung up drew aft, but as the barometer was falling slightly, and as the sea had a curious disturbed appearance, all the sail that she could carry was not set. At nightfall "an unusual dark shadow in tb« uorth-we»t" wm obwrved,

As the night wore on the wind and sea got up rapidly, and at midnight a violent gale was blowing. While the maintopsail was baing taken in, the wind shifted from south-west to north-north-west "with the force of a hurricane," and for a while the ship was iv very great danger. The writer of the account—who, as we have said, commanded her—seems to think that the Atalanta may have had a similar shift of wind, have been taken aback by lee and sunk. We doubt the juatice of hia conclusion. With some indications of a revolving gale, he does not seem to have obeyed the cardinal rule and to have brought his vessel to on the tack on which she would have come up aa the wind shifted. If such a mistake was made it was a most pardonable one, but it is not such a mistake as a careful captain of a ■ailing man-of-war in no way pressed for time would have made. It is permissible to suppose that, under the circumstances described, so competent a commander as Captain Stirling would have hove to on the starboard tack, and have much diminished the risk of being taken by the lee.

To what, then, is the loss of the AtaUnta to be ascribed? Possibly to a collision with a hull awash, as has been suggested ; possibly to a fact which hitherto seems to have received scarcely any attention. Those who have speculated as to the cause of this terrible catastrophe scarcely seem to have taken into account the age of the vessel. As a general rule, with a wooden ship age means weakness, and the Atalanta was a very old ship. It is scarcely necessary to point out the difference between defects of form and want of strength. A. ship's proportions may be such as to make her easy in a sea, and at the same time she may be very dangerous owing to weakness. The seams of a very old vessel are wide, and many of her fastenings are of ten weakened. She is not necessarily unseaworthy, especially if she be built of teak, but the chances are against her being able to withstand exceptional gales in the stormy belt. Does it not seem to some extent probable, as we previously suggested, that the Atalanta worked terribly in a series of very heavy seas, and that at last her seams opened so much a» to let in more water than the pumps could keep down ? The vessel which could weather any gale in 1855-56-57 may have been extremely different in 1880. It seems clear that her shape was not such as to cause any danger in a gale, but her timbers may have been no longer fit to stand the tremendous strain. It would be absurd to speak confidently respecting the calamity, of which at present nothing is known for certain ; but it is permissible to point out probabilities, and it certainly seems to some extent probable that this ship foundered from weakness. As it happens, on this point the" opinions of the most practical men are easily obtainable. It will be well if the committee which has to investigate the circumstances relating to this disaster, asks the underwriters what the rates of insurance are for wooden vessels aa old as the Atalanta.