which sufficed to hurry the Royal Charter's wretched passengers and ship's company into eternity? Am I to believe that there is no hope for the human freight of such a ship stranded within fifty yards of land, and with a hawser already sent on shore that it is their inevitable fate to be engulfed by the angry waters, struggling and clinging together? Are sea-voyagers to be told that, of all the thousands of iron ships afloat, the fate of every one is almost instantaneous and utter destruction, should she strike upon some hidden reef?

Surely these are unnecessary alarms and suspicions to entertain, even after so terrible a tragedy as the wreck in Moelfra Bay; and yet a belief in them is a legitimate deduction from the admission of the Royal Charter being, for her class, a vessel of fully average strength.

And surely it is a more probable, a more charitable, and a more comfortable inference, that some hidden source of weakness in the materials or in the construction of the ill-fated ship itself was the cause of that sudden and terrible crash, than that so many we love and so much that we value are now and always intrusted in fragile and unsafe ships.

There are not wanting many and pertinent examples of wrecks to iron ships which point to the very opposite conclusion, proving their strength and safety, and showing how tenaciously they will hold together under severe and lengthened strains. The Great Britain, it will be remembered, was left bumping upon the rocks in Dundrum Bay during a whole winter, and even in that exposed position was thought so safe, and so far from destruction, that her crew remained on board. In the case of the Vanguard, wrecked on the west coast of Ireland, and exposed consequently to the full swell of the Atlantic, it appears she remained in a position in which, from midships to the stern, she was entirely unsupported, and yet was so little injured that, in the words of one who went over to examine her, "although beating hard upon the rocks for so many days, no part of her engines was deranged, and they were kept constantly at work." Again, the Royal George, an iron steamer running between Liverpool and Glasgow, and a

vessel of unusual length compared to her beam, got on a rock near Greenock at high water, and as the tide receded it was found she rested nearly on her centre, with both ends entirely unsupported. No vessel could have been subjected to a severer strain than this, and yet she also was hauled off at the next tide entirely uninjured. I could adduce numerous other instances to prove my point that well-constructed iron ships are very safe-in fact, safer than any wooden ships can be made, because the iron ship is by the riveting and proportioning of the plates made into a firm continuous mass of uniform strength; whereas a wooden ship is composed of innumerable pieces, which at best can only be imperfectly joined together. But then greater circumspection is required in the selection of the material for the iron than for the wooden vessel. A shaky or rotten piece of oak, teak, or elm is easily detected; and if a shipbuilder use deal where oak should be placed, at least his dishonesty is readily discovered. But, if I may be permitted the paradox, iron is not always iron. It is sometimes rubbish, and in this category I would unhesitatingly place all "boat plates." It is not that even in these inferior plates pieces may not be found which shall come up to and even surpass Mr. Fairbairn's standard of the average tenacity of good Staffordshire plate; but, being made chiefly from cinder iron, it is their inequality and uncertainty which is most to be dreaded. The strength of the whole is that of the weakest part, and when I tell you that out of the same "boat plate," or iron of that quality, two pieces have been taken, one of which sustained 22 tons to the square inch of section, while the other failed at 5 tons, I have said enough to show why this dangerous material should be at once discarded in building ships, and the price of "best plates" be paid to ensure the exclusion of cinder iron from their manufacture. Boat plates are shams.. They are got up to deceive by appearances. Smooth and welllooking on the surface, the source of mischief lies hidden underneath rotten at the core, like the grub-eaten fruit whose tempting skin conceals the tiny hole by which the insect has entered. But this iron is a curse as well as a decep

tion, for while you may be angered at the Yankee who has sold you wooden nutmegs, or the grocer who sands his sugar, or the petty swindler who sells you 100 yards of sewing cotton "warranted" 200, I know no words strong enough to condemn the practice of makers and buyers alike, who in structures where the safety of life and limb is at stake, will willingly and knowingly, and for gain's sake alone, imperil the existence of their fellow-creatures.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,

AMICUS.