SHIPS AND THE SEA

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 106, 31 October 1908, Page 12

SHIPS AND THE SEA-

"LOSS OF LIFE.'* % Tho "loss of life" figures for 1907, just published in a. White Paper, once agam draw attention to the light nature of the toll which the sea is allowed to take nowadays. A total of only 1181 lives lost through wrecks and other casualties can scarcely be regarded as heavy when We remember the vast- | ness of our mercantile marine. True it is slightly larger than that for 1906^ but comparison with a single year would (according to an English shipping journal) be unfair. In order to obtain a just estimate of the advance which is being made in the direction of safety at sea, it is necessary to look back for a number of years, and also to take into consideration the ratio in which the losses stand to the number of men employed. When this is dme we find a wonderful improvement in results. In 1891, for instance, the loss roll in steam worked out at 1 in 183. Two years later it stood at 1 in 166, while in 1899 it went up to lin 149. Then, however, it began to fall, ana last year it was only 1 in 271, or little more than half what it worked out at in 1899. In 1906 it was phenomenally small — 1 in 332 — and when it is remembered that the early months of that year saw the new freeboard tables come into work the argument that they &pelt murder falls rather flat.