Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 September 1892 — THE LOSSES AT SEA. [ARTICLE]

THE LOSSES AT SEA.

is tt# Ehriy Btcwnssfcly Osfi. From 18M, the time whra transatlantic itcswdaap traffic was established, till 1878 there were 144 steamers of ail classes lost, says Prat Dyer in the Scottish Review. Of these twenty-four never reached she ports for which they sailed, itlieir fates being unknown; tea wera hunted at sea, eight were sunk in collisions, three were sunk by ice, and the others were stranded or lost front various causes. Many of these were email, but some were of considerable size tad their ‘loss earned much public feeling. Tbs first which disappeared was the President, which wadsever heard of after she sailed in (84L. A Cunnrd steamer, the Columbia, was wrecked by ruuning asbor* in 181$, but it is some whet remarkable that this was the only Atlantic steamer lost in thirteen years after tbs disappearance of the President, a fact which speaks volumes for the quality of the workmanship of the shipbuilders trad engineers and the skill and care of das navigator*. In 1854 the City of Gian gnw, with (80 souls on hoard, was mever seen nr heard of after she sailed, assd in the same year she Arctic of the Celliniline was sank by a collision and 5®2 persons perished, anil two years bier another of the same tine disnp|>eared with 188 persons on board. The Austria, of the^l&ancbttrg-American line, was burned at sea in 1858, with a loss of 171 livee. Home of the most striking losses ia the following yean were the City of Boston of (the Inman tine, which disappeared in 1870, with upward of 200 perrons on, board; the Atlantic of the While Star line, which ran ashore in 1878, causing the leas «f 560 lives; the Ville da Havre of the French line, which waa mink by .collision in the English channel 2:it persona drowned; the State of Florida, sunk by collision with a tailing ship, aud the Cunnrd liner Oregon, by the same cause with n coal schooner. Statistics -show a great decrease in the number <>( accidents and losses during what may lie called rihe modem period of pesmskipa, .ae'compared with the earlier, and especially wads the transition period from miking vessels to steamships. The record for tthe year 1800 was of the mod. satisfactory kind, tor, notwithstanding all the risks m waived, we Bnd that these were •nearly 2,000 trips made from New Turk alone to varans European ports **d that about 280,000 cabin JMWKc.agers wem carried, in addition to 873*000 emigrants, all without any accident. ft .is an interesting fact to note that In •the huge Jure of steamers the average safety of the nailer's life is high- The late Thomas Gray stated, for instonoq, that In (the Union line to the cape he found that uuly one puasenger had did in twenty yearn, and that four seamen diet! in throe years. In the lVmitattlar and (Mental only one seaman bad did in om year au the forty vessels of the line, and during three years not a single passeugsr hud been lost; the Inman line had lost mo ys—rngen out of a million, and only eleven seamen luul died in three ! years, and the Canard liners had no p»sI Kcngcra lost in three yean and only nice ' seaman dead.