rescuing at much risk of life the crew of the smack John and James, of Chester, which, during blowing weather, had struck outside Aberystwith Harbour on the 5th April. Various other rewards were also given for saving life from different wrecks. Captain M'Donald, R.N., inspecting commander of the Coast Guard at Banff, was thanked by the society for his valuable services in assisting to establish two lifeboats on the N.E. coast of Scotland, During the past month the institution had sent two new lifeboats to Dublin Bay-one was to be stationed at Kingstown and the other at Poolbeg. Some satisfactory trials had been made with the boats on their arrival on the Irish coast. Another lifeboat was building for Howth. A lifeboat was ready to be sent to Kirkcudbright, on the Scotch coast. The cost (£250) of the lifeboat and her carriage had been presented to the institution by a gentleman resident in Manchester. It was reported that a full-sized lifeboat, belonging to the institution, was to be seen in the gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society, which adjoin the International Exhibition. The boat had been refused admission into the exhibition by the commissioners, although their naval superintendent had requested the society, on the 23rd April to send her to the building. One would have thought that it would have been emphatically entitled to a place amongst the most conspicuous products of our skill, for while it would be impossible to overrate the importance of boats of this class, which were last year instrumental in saving 743 lives from shipwrecks on the British coast, it is equally true that in their construction England stands not only unrivalled but almost alone. Foreigners are thus to a great extent deprived of the opportunity of estimating the perfection to which the British lifeboat has attained. Payments amounting to nearly £1000 were made on various lifeboat establishments. It was reported that on the recommendation of the Attorney-General, the Lord Chancellor had ordered £400 from a lapsed Chancery fund to be appropriated to the National Lifeboat Institution. The proceedings then terminated. [We We regret being obliged to curtail our Club discussions from a press of other matter.-ED.] THE PRESENT CONDITION OF MERCHANT SEAMen, and How IT MAY BE IMPROVED. St. John's Lodge, near Aylesbury, May 1862. Sir, I feel sure that the above subject will always claim space in your columns: would that I were as sure of being able to treat it in the manner it deserves. But it seems right for some one to call at tention to it, as it has too long exemplified the truth of the old adage "What is everybody's business is nobody's business." The peculiarities of a sailor arise from the circumstances with which his profession surrounds him, by which some of human nature's weakest points are laid bare, courting the attacks of numerous enemies. Unlike the young landsman he never has to provide for himself, but is in this point treated as a child so long as he goes to sea; which prevents him from acquiring a most important habit, and leaves him a prey to the thousands of parasites who live on the hard earned pay of seamen, and at the same time hang like dead weights upon them, it being their interest to do all in their power to prevent Jack from rising in the scale of society. That they succeed but too well may be seen by any one visiting the resorts of sailors, inhabited as they are by the veriest scum of the earth, a misery to themselves and a nuisance to the whole neighbourhood in which they dwell. The great question is-How is this to be remedied? Something has been already done in the shape of Sailors' Homes, Savings' Banks, &c.; and to this may be attributed the progress which sailors have made during the last few years. But an immense deal remains to be done, both for them and for those who are tempted by such easy prey to lead the most degraded of lives; for the sailor-parasites are more likely to become useful members of society when the sailortemptation is lessened by sailors going to the Homes and making a more provident use of their money.. We ought also to have Homes for married sailors, where their wives and families could live at moderate terms, with the means of earning a little money; also a Benefit Fund for old and disabled sailors. This, by raising the moral standard of seamen, would proportionably increase their value to their employers. The second question is-Who ought to get up these Homes and a Benefit Fund? The self-evident answer is-the employers. Government provides for its sailors and soldiers; the squires of villages get up benefit clubs and other societies for the advantage of those who work on their land; factory-owners get up schools and societies for the benefit of their artisans. It therefore stands to reason that merchants and shipowners should do this for sailors. It is to do their work that sailors are induced to enter that peculiar line of life which quite unfits them for managing for themselves when they step on shore, and the least they can do is to devote a little of their time and ability towards providing for them when they arrive home. We would not ask the merchants and shipowners for money. We think that as a rule sailors are well paid. What we want is a little of their head and heart work to plan a useful fund to which sailors may subscribe, and thus insure a provision for themselves in old age, or to their widows and orphans. We hear that there are £600,000 of unclaimed sailors' wages now lying idle, and also a surplus of about £200,000 in the hands of the Trinity House of overplus income. Now this last does not really belong to sailors, but to shipowners ; still they might request it to be added to the other, and form a nucleus for a grand provident fund to which all sailors should be induced to subscribe, and to which all dead seamen's wages and effects, when unclaimed, should be paid. The £800,000 to start with would be a good argument to induce sailors to subscribe. But, independent of these sums, we think that sailors might be persuaded to subscribe freely to a fund well guaranteed by Government or by our first merchants and shipowners, especially if the method of subscribing to this fund were adapted to the way in which they receive their pay,-I mean in lump sums. Let it be soundly calculated how much pension could be given to a sailor when fifty-five or sixty years of age, or when disabled, or to his widow or orphan children, after he had subscribed £20, or £30, or £40, or £50, and so on. Then let him pay it in in lump sums at the end of his voyage, not yearly. An old shipmate or comfortable ship might be going to sail directly on his arrival home, then Jack, wishing to go, would perhaps pay a lump sum to the fund, instead of wasting his money in ruining himself and others. Something of this kind must be done before sailors can steadily improve, and the sooner some Christian friends commence it the better. A good fund, more Sailors' Homes, Homes for married sailors, would be a grand step. Then all commanders and officers understanding the benefits could, whilst at sea, reason with and persuade their men to support these useful methods devised to help them. There would be no reason why commanders and officers should not subscribe to a similar or the same fund,-it would be a great boon. It is useless to say that sailors are so ungrateful it is no use helping them. Sailors are human beings, made reckless by the peculiarities of their profession, and what they need is that those wise and provi dent heads into whose service they have thrown themselves should work with their whole hearts to remedy the great difficulty, which is chiefly the result of their circumstances. Yours faithfully, To the Editor of the Nautical Magazine. HENRY TOYNBEE. [We hope to see this excellent proposal taken up and discussed to maturity in these pages.-ED.] New Books. Narrative of THE CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF THE GLOBE by the Austrian Frigate "Novara," undertaken by order of the Imperial Government in the years 1857-59.-By Dr. Karl Scherzer. Vol. I. Saunders, Otley, & Co., London, 1861. A goodly volume is this, reminding us of the days of quartos, when such narratives could only assume that form, handed down to us from the dark ages of Cook and Anson, continuing until those of Parry and Beechey, when symptoms of change came over the scene, and now they are unheard of. Voyages round the world have long lost the charm with which they were once en dowed, even a journey to the pyramids or the source of the Nile is no longer attractive; the roads are cut up,-the scenes commonplace,—the giant steam has penetrated everywhere, discovery is at an end, and there is nothing new under the sun, even at the antipodes. Be it so. There may be nothing new, but many a volume might be filled with what there is to learn in many strange places between us and our antipodes. So the Novara sallies forth from Trieste, under the auspices ofthe Grand Duke Maximilian, and here are the first fruits of her labours in the field of science armed with instructions for observation from that profundity of research and erudition, the venerable Alexander Von Humboldt. Our space at the present moment compels us to be brief. But we propose in another number or two to accompany our German voyagers on their adventures even through our well known haunts of Rio. the Cape, St. Paul, Ceylon, Singapore, Canton, the Yangtse, Sydney, Auckland, Tahiti, Valparaiso, and Cape Horn, and thus home through the Straits, with the view of novelty hunting through these several points of their voyage. From a cursory glance here and there into this volume, the style in which information is conveyed, both in narrative and illustration, is not only attractive but interesting in some new points of view. POPULAR AND MATHEMATICAL ASTRONOMY, with the Principal Formulæ of Plane and Spherical Trigonometry, - By W. T. Read. Longman. Mr. Read, experienced as a teacher in Greenwich School, takes a just view of the importance of impressing every particular of information given to a pupil vividly in his mind. Hence he conveys the astronomical knowledge he is for inculcating in a number of brief sentences on each branch of the subject, and adds a string of questions to which they are the answers. This is evidently a sure way of storing the mind of youth with facts, the good effects of which Mr. Read may have himself witnessed at the establishment to which he belonged, so well known for turning out well informed youths. It is an excellent system, and really the first accessory to the true art of teaching, which must render this a really popular book. THE STUDY OF STEAM AND THE MARINE ENGINE,-By S. M. Saxby, The author of this little treatise, who has an important appointment in H.M. service, seems to hold to the doctrine "Enough for the purpose." And this he keeps before him when throwing together in a small compass all that the engineer requires to know for his duty. This is decidedly a sound view of the subject, as thereby certain positions in it are gained from which the pupil can if he pleases launch out into further inquiries, which, although useful and satisfactory, are not absolutely required of him. It is thus that, seeing the scattered condition of that information which the engineer requires, Mr. Saxby has here given him in a collective form all the information on steam and elementary mathematics that his station demands he should know. After taking his pupil through geometry and plane trigonometry, the composition of logarithms, and glancing at the various mathematical curves and the application of mathematics to mechanics, he comes to the consideration of steam and its various qualities and applications, and enters largely into the subject of the component parts of the marine steam engine and its management in connection with principles. On the whole we think Mr. Saxby has taken a just view of the case he has to deal with; and his book bids fair, on account of its general character as far as the engineer's wants are concerned, to become a favourite work with that officer. THE NAUTICAL MAGAZINE AND Naval Chronicle. JULY, 1862. THE CAPTURE AND DISPOSAL OF THE PORTUGUESE SLAVER "NEGRINHA." I always considered it a most fortunate thing on joining a ship if I found that none of my messmates had ever been sent away in a slaver. In this case I could make sure of an attentive audience at least once a month, when I related how and where we captured the Negrinha, slaver. But as the narrative always occupied considerably more than an hour, if justice was done to the subject, it was necessary to obtain from the first lieutenant permission for half an hour's light. Even then the master-at-arms would be kept waiting sometime at our berth door before the lights and I were finally extinguished. On joining the Excellent, gunnery ship, I found more than twenty messmates, none of whom had ever seen a slaver, and I made sure that all of them, collectively and individually, would be astonished at the wonderful adventures of Paddy Ashe! But how early in life do we learn disappointment, and that real happiness is not to be attained in this world. It was true that none of my messmates had ever been sent away in a slaver, but then we had Fitzjames and Charlewood in the mess, who had just returned from the Euphrates expedition under Colonel Chesney! And Fitzjames, with a volubility rarely met with in a midshipman's berth, would carry all before him, and Ashe's slaver did not dare show a stitch of canvas when the wind was blowing from the East, and he was amongst us. Highly illustrative this of Darwin's "struggle for life;' or perhaps a more NO. 7.-VOL. XXXI. 2 x |