t is a coast which is neither sea nor land, strewn with wrecks, and
with somber memories even more tragic. Where is now the entrance of
the Zuyder Zee was unbroken terra firma until the thirteenth century
when a terrible hurricane piled the North Sea through the isthmus
separating it from the large lake called Vlies by the natives. A wide
channel was cut by this inroad, and in 1287 the North Sea scoured for
itself a second inlet at the cost of a hundred thousand human lives.
Ever since then, the channels have been multiplying and shifting until
what was once the coast line has become a maze of islands and
sand-banks, the Texel, Vlieland, Terschelling, Ameland, and hundreds of
lesser ones which confuse even the mariners born and bred among them.

With a wind which should have enabled him to give this perilous shore a
wide berth and to keep to his course up the North Sea, Captain Skynner
plunged into a death-trap from which there was no escape. The sole
survivor could give no coherent account, and he died while on the way
to England before his shattered nerves had mended. There was no more
frigate, and as for the hundreds of drowned sailors, they had been
obliterated as a day's work in the business of a great navy, so the
Admiralty left the mourning to their kinfolk and bestirred itself about
that five and a half million dollars' worth of treasure which the sea
could not harm. Vice-Admiral Mitchell was informed by letter that
"their lordships feel great concern at this very unfortunate accident"
and he was directed to take such measures as might be practicable for
recovering the stores of the _Lutine_, as well as the property on
board, "being for the benefit of the persons to whom it belongs."

The underwriters of Lloyd's with an eye to salvage, were even more
prompt than the Admiralty in sending agents to the scene of the wreck.
The greater part of the immense amount of coin and bullion had been
fully insured, a transaction which indicates the stability and ample
resources of this association as far away in time as 1799. The loss
was paid in full and with such promptitude that only two weeks after
the disaster, the Committee for managing the concerns of Lloyd's
addressed a letter to the Secretary of the Admiralty in which was
requested "the favor of Mr. Nepean to lay before the Lords
Commissioners of the Admiralty the information that a sum of money,
equal to that unfortunately lost in the _Lutine_, is going off th