To chronicle at the close of each succeed- ing year the notable events which have marked its course, is a very natural and in many ways a useful and profitable duty for statisticians to carry out; and the past year has been anything but un- productive of materials for their work, more especially on matters of the greatest importance and interest to this Institu- tion, viz., " Saving Life at Sea" in the general acceptation of the term, and not as confined to the Institution's own pecu- liar branch, which is " Saving Life from Shipwreck." Amongst these may well be classed the great advance that has been made towards establishing telegraphic communication between the lightships round our coasts and the shore. The necessity for this has been urged more than once in these pages, and is graphically pressed home to public attention by such appalling catastrophes as the wreck of the Schiller close under a lighthouse off the Scilly Islands, the Deutschland on the outlying sands off Harwich, and many other such sad exam-ples. It is true that for many years a general system has been established for giving the alarm and calling for help for those in danger, by means of guns and rockets from lightships, and only last year this was considerably enlarged and extended by the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House, with their usual readiness to help forward by all means in their power the work of this Institution. The object of these alterations has been to in- dicate where the help is required, and con- sequently should be sent direct, instead of having to go to the lightship to ascertain the position of the wreck, in doing which much valuable time was often lost, besides at times the impossi-bility of hearing or understanding, during the howling of the storm, the directions given. Even when every effort had been made, this was but an imperfect means of communication, and to a considerable extent dependent on the state of the weather; guns may not be heard, and rockets cannot be seen in thick weather.

In the daytime matters were worse, and we have known, quite recently, of cases in which the Life-boat authorities have been obliged to wait until dark, that they might then see the rockets, but by so doing losing much time that would have been very valuable if the necessary warn- ings could have been given earlier. It may appear rather ungracious, when there are good reasons for hoping that this undesir- able state of affairs is in the fair way to being corrected, to say, " Better late than never;" but when we look round and see the great strides that have been made of late years in utilizing more and more the enormous and subtle power of electricity, we cannot but wonder that the importanc of the matter has not sooner pressed itself on the minds of our electrical engineers.

No doubt there were difficulties to be overcome, and the ultimate arrangement may differ considerably from the present one; but it would be an insult to the talented engineers of this country to sup- pose them insurmountable. The principal if not only difficulty has been, in joining the telegraph cable to the ship. It is evident that simply taking it on board like any other rope, either through the hawse-hole or anywhere else, would not do, because every time the ship swung with the wind or tide, unless she swung back again the reverse way, it would wind round the mooring-cable, and entail per- petually " clearing hawse " or breaking the wire. . The first proposal, as exhibited at the Fisheries Exhibition, showed the lightship moored with two anchors and " bridles " coming up to a swivel; one of the chains forming the bridles was to be made of double links in a very ingenious method, kept apart by shoulders on each, and the swivel with a hollow centre or bolt instead of a solid one, the telegraph cable was then passed up through the spaces between the double links, and through the hole in the swivel in- board. This form of bridle has since been abandoned, in favour of a steel wire rope of equal, if not greater, strength, up the core or heart of which the telegraph wire passes, then through the swivel as before and on board.

The first practical experiment—for the undertaking cannot yet be considered to have passed out of the experimental stage— has been made by the Telegraph Construc- tion and Maintenance Company, under contract with the Trinity House for con- necting the Sunk Lightship, off the Essex coast, with Walton-on-the-Naze. The con- nection had been made, and all seemed to promise success, when, after a few days, came the unwelcome news that the cable had broken again. This was found to have occurred just below the swivel of the moorings, and to be owing to the fric- tion caused by the tightening and slack- ening of the moorings, through the rise and fall of the tide, or variations in the force of the wind and sea. This defect has now been repaired, and the communi- cation made good again.. Such drawbacks must be looked for in starting a novelty such as this, although we cannot but feel sure that it will require the discovery of far greater difficulties than this to over- come the talent and energy of the Com- pany in carrying the undertaking to a successful issue.

It is intended there should be a con- stant watch at Walton-on-the-Naze, to receive any message from the lightship, and arrangements have been made for sending it on immediately to Ramsgate or Harwich as necessary, where two of the most [powerful boats in the Institution's fleet are stationed, one of which would nearly always have a fair wind for the outer sands.

This is one of the most important ad- vances possible in the measures taken by this country for saving life and property at sea, because the first few hours after a ship strikes often decides, for good or bad, the fate of both vessel and crew. These were frequently spent in unavailing efforts to draw the attention of the shore to the need for help, which will now be done in as many minutes, and consequently many valuable lives and much property will be saved.

It may also be hoped that when this means of communication has—as we may reasonably hope it will—become general round our coast, this Institution will de- rive considerable benefit from the more precise information as to the requirements of vessels, now so often exaggerated or imperfectly expressed by the indiscrimi- nate use of the universal " flare," which, although a recognised and the most gene- rally used signal for distress, is also used for other and minor purposes, and leads to the unnecessary launch of the Life- boats, with the consequent expenditure of the Institution's funds to no purpose, as well as the annoyance of Boats' crews at being called out for nothing. During the past year the Boats were unavoidably, but unnecessarily, launched over one hundred times in reply to these or similar signals.

Of course in many cases the necessity for the Life-boat service may have existed when the signals were .made, but had been removed by a rapidly rising tide, favourable change of wind, &c., enabling the vessel to escape from her danger before the arrival of the boat; but we have little doubt that in some cases they are used for purposes of much lighter im- portance. This must, we think, always be a very difficult question to deal with. The law now renders any master of a vessel, who makes such signals unnecessarily, liable to any expenses they may cause, but the difficulties in the way of proving them to have done so must render it inopera- tive in all but the most wilful cases, even if it were expedient to put it in motion, which seems to us very doubtful. Of course when flares are seen at night, it would never do for the Life-boats to wait to consider and weigh the probabilities of whether they come from a vessel in dis- tress or not, and it is almost too far- fetched to suppose the result can ever be the same as was that of the cry of "Wolf! wolf!" in the well-known old fable. The means of communication by the wire at present in use, are the Morse, ABC, and Wheatstone telegraph instru- ments, and the telephone.

If the apparently great difficulties to be overcome in completing the mechanical appliances can be taken as a good excuse for the great delay in effecting telegraphic communications between our lightships and the shore, as much certainly cannot be said for the more than apathy displayed by the" powers that be/' in promoting or enforcing the compulsory adoption (par- ticularly on board passenger ships) of one or other of the admirable inventions for rendering articles of every-day use nn- sinkable, and, in case of sudden emergency, capable of being almost instantaneously converted into life-preservers or life-saving rafts. The difficulties have been already overcome, as any visitor to the Life-boat department of the late Fishery Exhibition, exerting the ordinary powers of observa- tion, must have seen for himself. We do not here refer so much to the means of rescue from " shipwreck proper" on our own coasts, as from the result of sudden catastrophe in deep water, either by col- lision, explosion, fire, leaking, stress of weather, or other causes, although to these may doubtless be added some few cases of shipwreck, in which, from position, or very rapid destruction, there is not time to afford aid, either by Life-boat or Socket apparatus.

It would not be becoming for us, in the Journal of the Institution, to praise the result of one inventor's labours beyond ano- ther's; we can, therefore, only refer to what we saw at the Fisheries in general terms; but when we found ship's bridges, deck seats, mattrasses, and numerous other arti- cles of furniture, so cleverly and practi- cally contrived as life-preservers that they could not entirely fail in the moment of emergency, it was scarcely possible not to come to the comforting conclusion that at any rate the wholesale loss of life involved in such catastrophes as the loss of H.M.S. Birkenhead, the Northfleet, the Princess Alice, H.M.S. Eurydiee, the Teuton, the Navarre, and many others, need not occur again; because in nearly every one of the cases named, and doubtless many others, help was so near at hand, and the state of the weather such that any one supplied with the means of merely keeping afloat could reasonably hope to be picked up before becoming exhausted. This is put- ting the inventions referred to at their lowest value, because a short time for pre- paration would ensure many of these fittings being transformed into serviceable and comparatively safe rafts.

The subject has not been allowed to rest entirely, for we find that in 1879 the Society of Arts appointed an in- , fluential and thoroughly representative Committee, to " report on the best method of saving life at sea." Their Report, which was presented to the House of Commons on the 3rd of July, 1879, con- tains the following passages: "We have said that, as a matter of course, in. every description of vessel, from the largest ironclad to the smallest yacht, it would be well to supply the means of floating the crew and passengers, even if floating can be all that can be effected in case of sudden disaster, by collision, fire, wreck, &c., when the vessel has to be abandoned promptly, and either there is no time to get the boats ready, or there are not boats sufficient; provided that no sacrifice, or great sacrifice, of space be asked for, no great expense be incurred, and, as far as possible, existing articles be utilized." Again: "It is not a little remarkable that we have had, during the last few years, an example of almost every con- ceivable description of sudden disaster to ships, involving fearful loss or risk of life, the former of which would have leen diminished by life-saving appliances in nearly every case." The italics are the Committee's, not ours. In 1883 the Board of Trade issued a circular, calling the attention of owners of passenger ships that were surveyed for a " passenger certificate " to the fact that " the vessel was not provided with any appliances for saving the lives of the passengers in event of sudden casualty," at the same time asking to be informed whether they were prepared to supply their ships with any, and if so what, life-saving appliances in addition to the boats and life-buoys re- quired by the provisions of the Merchant Shipping Act, 1854. This may fairly be considered to show that the Board though it very desirable some steps should be taken, for improving the chances of rescue for the passengers and crews of vessels in case of sudden catastrophe. In this matter we might well copy our cousins on the other side the Atlantic, without un- duly interfering with that liberty of action so prized in both countries. Acts o: Congress were passed in 1873 and 187'.

compelling every passenger - carrying steamer, whether on river or ocean, to carry, in the former case, a " good life preserver," or float, for each passenger he is allowed to carry, to be kept in convenient and accessible places on such vessels, in readiness for immediate use in case of accident. Sea-going steamers are o carry such numbers of life-boats, floats, rafts, life-preservers, and drags, as shall best secure the safety of all persons on board such vessel in case of disaster.

The Board of Supervising Inspectors are charged with the duty of first approving what life-boats, rafts, &c., shall be con- sidered efficient, their selection being again confirmed by the Secretary of the Treasury. The penalty for non-compliance is 1000 dollars, or about £200. We were much struck one day, when on board one of the large ocean-going passenger steamers, to see on battens between the beams, in the sleeping cabins, neat white linen bags, which we found contained cork life- belts or jackets, of which we were told, with an air of satisfaction, that there was one for every one on board. This might look very well, and give a false sense of security to an anxious parent just parting from a son or daughter, or to the pas- senger of average thoughtfulness; but how many of these would be " in readiness for immediate use in case of necessity," caused by a sudden collision, outbreak of fire, &c., or how many of the passengers would know how to put them on, or make use of them?—whilst every article of everyday use, such as deck seats, hatches, cushions, mattrasses, &c., on being thrown overboard, or floated off on the ship going down, would support a certain number, and so give them the chance of being picked up by any help that might be at hand. Failing active measures by the Government in the direction of Acts of Parliament, compelling passenger-carrying ships to provide for the safety of all on board as far as practicable, we rather wonder that, in these days of keen com- petition, the carrying of life-rafts, &c., is not held out by any of the competitors as an additional security for passengers, and therefore a recommendation to their steamers. We believe it would certainly influence many people, and naturally so; for it is a fact that on occasion of many of the most appalling instances of loss of life through catastrophes to shipping that have occurred of late years, help has been so near, and the state of the weather such, that nearly all who could have been kept above water for an hour or two would have been saved. In advocating the much wider use of life-saving articles of furni- ture on board ship, we do not for one moment mean to urge their supply as substitutes for boats, but as auxiliaries to them. We believe it to be practically impossible for a ship to carry sufficient boats, to hold the crowds of passengers we frequently see on both river and ocean- going vessels, and if they were to, and all due care taken to keep them in a thorough state of readiness, experience shows us that, in the unavoidable confusion gene- rally attending a sudden casualty, more than half of them would be capsized, or otherwise rendered useless. It is a far more delicate operation—even with no excitement and experienced hands—to prepare and lower a boat, than to drop a raft overboard. How much more so, then, would it be tinder the usual circum- stances attending any sudden call for the services of the former?