but
as life-saving stations are established at nearly every harbor's mouth,
and are plentiful about the pleasure cruising grounds of yachts and small
sailboats, hundreds of lives are annually saved by the crews in ways that
attract little attention. In 1901 the records show 117 such rescues.

The idea of the life-saving service originated with a distinguished
citizen of New Jersey, a State whose sandy coast has been the scene of
hundreds of fatal shipwrecks. In the summer of 1839 William A. Newell, a
young citizen of that State, destined later to be its Governor, stood on
the beach near Barnegat in a raging tempest, and watched the Austrian brig
"Count Perasto" drift onto the shoals. Three hundred yards from shore she
struck, and lay helpless with the breakers foaming over her. The crew
clung to the rigging for a time, but at last, fearing that she was about
to go to pieces, flung themselves into the raging sea, and strove to swim
ashore. All were drowned, and when the storm went down, the dead bodies of
thirteen sailors lay strewn along the beach, while the ship itself was
stranded high and dry, but practically unhurt, far above the water line.

"The bow of the brig being elevated and close to the shore after the storm
had ceased," wrote Mr. Newell, in describing the event long years after,
"the idea was forced quickly upon my mind that those unfortunate sailors
might have been saved if a line could have been thrown to them across the
fatal chasm. It was only a short distance to the bar, and they could have
been hauled ashore in their small boat through, or in, the surf.... I
instituted experiments by throwing light lines with bows and arrows, by
rockets, and by a shortened blunderbuss with ball and line. My idea
culminated in complete success, however, by the use of a mortar, or a
carronade, and a ball and line. Then I found, to my great delight, that it
was an easy matter to carry out my desired purpose."

Shortly after interesting himself in this matter Mr. Newell was elected to
Congress, and there worked untiringly to persuade the national Government
to lend its aid to the life-saving system of which he had conceived the
fundamental idea. In 1848 he secured the first appropriation for a service
to cover only the coast of New Jersey. Since then it has been continually
extended until in 1901 the life-saving establishment embraced 270 stations
on the Atlantic, Pacific, and lake coasts. The appropriation for the year