w occurred
by the captain himself. It is very odd that even one man,
especially a shipmaster, should have been found disagreeing
with a reform that was to be of so much benefit to all
classes of seafaring men.

Up to that time vessels were sent to sea scandalously
overladen. There was no fixed loadline as there is now.
Cargoes were badly stowed; no bagging was done. The fitting
of shifting boards was left pretty much to the caprice of
the master, who never at any time could be charged with
overdoing it, but rather the reverse. I am speaking now more
particularly of steamers, though to some extent the same
reckless disregard for human safety existed among sailing
vessels. It was necessary, however, that commanders of
"windjammers" should be more painstaking in the matter of
having their cargoes thoroughly stowed, and that adequate
bulkheads and shifting boards should be fitted; for the
shifting of a sailing vessel's cargo was accompanied with
the possibilities of serious consequences. Sailing vessels
cannot be brought head-on to wind and sea, as steamers can,
and the weather may be so boisterous as to make it
impossible to get into the holds; and even if these are
'accessible, the heavy "list" and continuous lurching
prohibit the trimming of the cargo to windward.

But the great loss of life was not altogether caused by
allowing rotten, leaky, badly equipped sailing vessels to go
to sea, nor by the neglect of commanders of both sailers and
steamers to adopt reasonable precautions for the purpose of
avoiding casualty. At the very time when the whole country
was ablaze with excitement over the harrowing disclosures
that investigation had brought to light, Lloyds'
Classification Committee was allowing a type of
narrow-gutted, double-decked, long-legged, veritable coffins
to be built, that were destined to take hundreds of poor
fellows to their doom. Their peculiarity was to capsize, or
continuously to float on their broadsides. Superhuman effort
could not have kept them on their legs. Neither bagging
transverse or thwartship bulkheads were of any avail. Scores
of them that were never heard of after leaving port found a
resting-place, with the whole of their crews, at the bottom
of the Atlantic Ocean. They lie there, unless enormous
pressure has crushed them into mud; and their tombs, could
they be revealed, would give ghastly testimony to the
incompetence of naval architects. No amount of precautionary
measures cou