15 



should be kept in carefully selected places in the 

 respective ships. Our concern herein is with means for 

 saving the lives of numbers of persons collectively, of the 

 passengers and crews of ships they are compelled to desert, 

 or perish. 



No top hamper or deck lumber. — Boat-service in connec- 

 tion with ships will never probably be dispensed with, but 

 it has been shown satisfactorily, we trust, that dependence 

 upon boats as the principal or best means of saving ship- 

 wrecked passengers and crews must be abandoned. The 

 points in which the boat system is weak or breaks down 

 suggest the distinctive qualities that the improved means 

 that should supersede them ought to possess. It is simply 

 impossible to carry as many boats, and of sufficient capacity, 

 as would take off" the whole of a large well-filled passenger 

 or emigrant ship's passengers and crews ; they could 

 neither be swung on davits around the ships above the 

 bulwarks, nor stowed away on deck, without impeding the 

 working of the ship and prejudicially affecting its naviga- 

 tion. The improved means must not contribute top hamper 

 or deck bimher. It would be well to reduce the boats 

 carried on davits to a minimum ; as boats so carried 

 sometimes fail to resist the fierce attacks made upon them 

 in their exposed situation. Ships have been seen coming 

 out of a storm with fragments of boats hanging by the 

 falls. In the case of the La Plata the davits proved 

 powerful weapons of attack upon the ship that carried 

 them. Inasmuch, however, as no description of life-saving 

 appliances is likely to entirely supersede boats and davits, 

 the materials, lines, and principles of construction of boats, 

 the form and other characteristics of davits, and the most 

 efficient arrangements and action of gear for lowering and 

 disengaging boats, should be carefully considered, and the 



