THE RACE ACROSS THE ATLANTIC.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIII, Issue 102, 30 April 1892, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE RACE ACROSS THE ATLANTIC.

In the ' Scottish Review' for January, Professor Henry Dyer has an interesting article on ' The Race Across tho Atlantic, , in the course of which he suggests a theory that tho quicker the ships go tho lower accidents there are. At prefont the White Stai steamers cross the Atlantic in 5 days IG.j hours. The Cunard promise that their new steamers will cross tho Atlantic in 5 days and 10 hours : — From 183S, the time when trans-Atlan-tic steamship trallic was established, till 1879, thcro were one hundred and fortyfour steamers of all classes lost. 01 these twenty-four never reached the porta for which they sailed, their fates being unknown, ten were burned ab sea, eiirhb wero sunk in collisions, threo were sunk by ico, and tho others wero stranded or lost from various causes. Many of these wero small, bub some wero of considerable size, and ihoir loss caused much public feeling. Tho first which disappeared was tho President, which waa never heard of after sho sailed in IG4I. A Cunard steamer, the Columbia, was wrecked by running aahoro in 1843, but it is somewhat remarkable that this was the only Atlantic steamer lost in thirteen years after the disappearance of the President, a tact which speaks volumes for the quality of the workmanship of tho shipbuilders and engineers, and tho skill and c.ire of the navigators. In 1854 the City of Glasgow, with" four hundred and eighty souls on board, was never seen or hoard of after she sailed, and in the same yoar the Arctic, of the Colline lino, was sunk by a collision, and five hundred and sixty-two persons perished; and two years later another of the same lino disappeared with one hundred and eighty-six persons on hoard. Tho Austria, of tho HamburgAmerican line, was burnt at sea, in 185S, with a loss of 471 lives. Some of the most striking losses in the following year were tho City of Boston, of the imnau line, which disappeared in 1870 with upwards of '200 persons on board ; the Atlantic, of the White Star line, which ran ashore in 1873, causing tho loss of ."360 lives ; the Ville dv Havre, of the French line, which was sunk by collision in the English Channel, and 230 persona drowned ; the State of Florida,sunk by collision with a sailing ship ; and the Cunard liner Oregon by tho same causo with a coal schooner. Statistics show a great decrease in the number of accidents and losses daring what may bo called tho modern period of steamships, as compared with the earlier, and especially wibii the transition period from sailing vessels to steamships. Tho record for the year IS'JO was of the most satisfactory kind, for, notwithstanding all the risks involved, there wero nearly two thousand trips made from Now York alone to various European ports, and that about two hundred thousand C;ib ; n passengers were carried in addition to threo hundred and seventy-two thousand emigrants, all without any accMeno. It ia an interesting fact to note that in tho largo lines of steamers tho average safety of the sailor's life is high. The late Mr Thomas Gray stated, for instance, that in the Union line to tho Capo he found that only one passenger had dial in twenty years, and that four seamen died in three years. In the Peninsular and Oriental only one seaman had died in one year in the forty vessels of the line, and during three years not a single passenger had been lost. The Inraan liners ha'J lost no passengers oub of a million, and only eleven seamen had died in three years ; and the Cunard liners had no passenger.-; lost in tlnce years, and only nino seamen dead.