ON Friday, the 7th May last, occurred another of those fearful calamities which, like the foundering of the London and the Northfleet, ever and anon startle the whole British community, and serve to remind us of the uncertainty and imperfection of even the most carefully-devised human undertakings.

Although it occurred in British waters, the vessel itself, in this instance, was not of British nationality, nor were its un- happy inmates for the most part English, men and women.

The Schiller was a noble steam-ship, of 3,600 tons, belonging to the Eagle-line Mail Company, of Hamburg; she was an iron ship, and nearly new, having been built at Glasgow in 1873. She left New York on the 27th April, having on board at the time 264 passengers, and the officers and crew were 120 in. number.

All went well until the 7th May, on which day she was due at Plymouth, •when in the afternoon a fog set in; never- theless the vessel was kept at full speed until half-past 8, when, the density of the fog having much increased, she was put at half-speed, and an hour after she struck on the Betarrier Books, off the Scilly Islands, and within two-thirds of a mile of the lighthouse on the Bishop's Bock. Although going at slow speed at the time, and with the engines imme- diately reversed, the unyielding roeks had only too effectually done their work—the ill-fated ship was immovable, and imme- diately filled.

As may be supposed, and as is invari- ably the ease in a passenger-ship, all was at once confusion; alarm was depicted in every countenance, and cries of terror arose from nearly every lip. Orders were given by the captain to lower the boats; and, until he was himself washed off the bridge, at about 4 A.M., by a heavy sea and drowned, he did his best to preserve some order, even firing his pistol over the heads of the frantic crowd in his eSoris to do BO.

All the boats, however, except two were carried away by the sea before they could be lowered, many perishing with them, and one was crushed by the funnel falling on it. The ship held together for several hours; and had there been any means of making their hopeless condition known at St. Mary's, the chief of the Scilly Islands, a steamer and a first-class Life-boat be- longing to the NATIONAL LIFE-BOAT IN- STITUTION might have arrived in time to have saved a large number of lives. Such, however, was not to be; and when the morning dawned, all that remained of the crew and passengers, who a few hours before were looking forward to a happy meeting with their friends at home, were those who had succeeded in mounting the rigging of the fore and mainmasts and five or six others in the half-swamped boat, the only one which had been safely lowered. The women and children who had crowded the deck-houses and saloon, and the male passengers and those of the crew who were on the upper deck, or the bridge, had perished. Alarm guns were fired and signal lights thrown up conti- nuously, until the seas breaking over the ship prevented their being so; and some of the former were heard on the islands ; but as steamers from America seem to have been often in the habit of firing guns to signify their having arrived off the islands, they were not supposed to be danger signals. It is said, however, that at St. Agnes, the nearest island to the wreck, the guns were believed to be from a vessel in distress, but the fog was BO thick that boats were afraid to venture out.

One of the masts, the mainmast, fell at about 7 o'clock in the morning, and the foremast at about 8 o'clock, when most of those who remained in their rigging were lost. About that time, in fact, before the foremast had fallen, four boats from the shore arrived, and picked up several persons from the water, but finding the sea too heavy to go alongside the ship, one of them went to St. Mary's to convey intelligence of the disaster, and procure the aid of a, steam-tug and of the NATIONAL LIFE-BOAT INSTITUTION'S Life-boat sta- tioned there. As soon as possible the Life-boat, in tow of the steamer, arrived, but all was then over, and they 00)7 picked up twenty-three bags of mails and a few bodies. We have thus briefly sketched the main features of this sad disaster. Our object in doing so has not, however, been merely to record its cir- cumstances, which has already been done at greater length in the newspapers of the day, nor would any useful end be attained ,by our doing so, and we only refer to it to draw attention to some of the causes which led to it, for it is only by holding up such catastrophes as sea-marks for future guidance that similar losses from similar causes are likely to be avoided.

Thus we find, in this instance, a noble ship, under full control of steam and sail; the captain an able, experienced, and care- ful officer, whose devotion to his duty and sense of the responsibility thrown on him were shown by the fact of his not having had his clothes off for five nights previous to the loss of Ms ship; and the weather fine, with the exception of the prevalence of a dense fog.

If we further inquire whether the owners of the ship had done their duty in providing their passengers with all avail- able means of safety, we find that she had an ample and competent crew, had eight boats, six of them being Life-boats, and that life-belts more than sufficient for j every one on board were provided, and were to a large extent used, since all, or ; nearly all, the bodies that were picked up j had life-belts on them. The latter may, j however, have been of inferior quality, in- deed are said to have been so. With, so many elements of safety, what then caused them to be of no avail ? The immediate causes of the loss of the ship were apparently the dense fog and an insufficient allowance for the set of the well-known current which sets out of the Bay of Biscay to the northward, across the entrance of the British Channel, which has sometimes considerable strength.

A secondary cause was the old offence, so general in the Merchant Service, de'spite all the warnings of experience, neglect of sounding—the lead not having been used during-the day or night, nor on the two previous days.

Lastly, the chief cause of so few lives being saved, there can be little doubt, was j the same as that which led to such fearful j results in the case of the Northfleet, ' viz., the custom of making use of night I signals of distress for other objects, such : as to call for pilots, to signify arrival, &c., | &c., a folly admonished in advance in the old fable of the boy raising the alarm of ' Wolf, wolf,' when there was no wolf, and then receiving no succour from his neigh- j hours when the wolf came. I It appears to be customary for the German steamers to make the Scilly Islands to enable their agents there to telegraph, to Plymouth the approach* of their steamers, in order that the necessary preparations should be made for the prompt disembarkation of their passengers for England on their arrival at that port.

The saving of time, which, looking to the great daily expense of such vessels, with their hundreds of mouths to be fed, and their immense consumption of coal, is the saving of money to the shareholders, is of course the motive for communicating by signal with Scilly, just as the main- tenance of high speed in all weathers and by night as by day at all hazards is so, and which leads to so many disasters.

All that we would suggest, in the in- terest of humanity, is that such communi- cation should be left discretionary with the captain of every ship, in the case of fogs, when it should be optional for him to proceed directly for Plymouth, or to heave-to, or to feel his way at greatly diminished speed by frequent sounding, which would be a certain guide to him for a distance of many miles round the islands.

On the question of sounding, we think that, looking to the apparently incurable aversion to this invaluable precaution on the part of so many of the experienced captains in our mercantile marine, the officers of the BOARD OF TRADE, who con- duct the official inquiries into maritime disasters, should make the neglect of sounding when practicable a serious offence.

With reference to the great loss of life consequent on the disaster to the ship, no blame would seem to attach either to the owners of the ship or the captain.

As already stated, the ship was in every respect safe and " well-found "; and it was said in evidence that the Eagle line of steamers were expressly prohibited from firing guns, or exhibiting other distress- signals, to make themselves known, but that other German steamers had done eo, of which those on board this unfortunate ship now reaped the evil consequences.

We fear that the fact must be accepted, that, however well provided with Life- boats and life-belts, &c., when a ship goes to pieces on a reef of rocks or outlying bank of sand, many lives must be lost unless extraneous aid be afforded them,' the forces brought to bear on them Toeing too mighty to be contended with. Still that is no reason -why we should -unre- sistingly succumb to them; and in less ! extreme cases boats may be safely lowered, • and life-belts, if efficient cues, may not only float dead bodies, but may support! the living until succour arrives. ! In the course of the inquiry in this case a very general feeling seemed to pre- vail that a telegraphic wire laid down { between, the Bishop Lighthouse and the i island of St. Mary, where the Scilly Life- ' boat is stationed, and where there is a ' steam-tug, -would be of great service, and ;would have been the means, in this in- stance, of saving a large number of lives. , There can be DO doubt that such would j have beeu the case. We have heard,! indeed, that the THE. BOARD object to : their servants having their attention directed from their one duty of keeping the great safety-lights intrasted to them in perfect order, and we admit the wisdom of such a decision, as a general rule.

Looking, however, to the great import- ance to homeward-bound ships of their sighting the SeiJJy Islands, and to the numerous fatal Shipwrecks that have occurred on the rocks which surround them, and notoriously amongst them to the loss of the British Admiral Sir CLOCD- ESLEY SHOVEI, with three line-of-battle ships, in 1707, and, with the exception of one man, of all on board them, we cannot but think it worthy of serious considera- tion whether, in this instance at least, the " general rule" might not be departed from, and the mysterious wire laid down.

The working a Telegraph would, in such a locality, be » very slight tax on either the time or attention of the keepers of the lighthouse, and its Heaven-inspired voice of mercy might be the means of saving many and many a human being from a sad and premature end.