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It is not within the scope of this Paper to recommend 

 any particular invention or inventions, patented or other, 

 for saving life at sea ; or to urge dogmatically that it 

 is the duty of Government to make it compulsory for 

 the owners of all vessels carrying persons by water to 

 provide to the full duplicate floating power for the whole 

 of the persons they carry : that is to say, floating power in 

 the ship, boat, or vessel itself, and, in addition, means 

 sufficient that may be used extraneously for floating all the 

 persons carried. We are and may probably remain for a 

 time at a vast distance from this point. Our object is to 

 urge the transcendent importance of the subject ; to press 

 its imperative claims for consideration upon the attention 

 of Government and the nation ; to incite, if haply we may, 

 to practical action, and the removal of a national stigma and 

 disgrace, that ships of various kinds, viz., the sailing con- 

 ditions of which the Board of Trade does already inter- 

 fere with and in some degree control, are allowed to leave 

 our ports and our shores daily, carrying with them subjects 

 of the United Kingdom for whose lives no better provision 

 is made than will make it possible for one in ten at most to 

 escape death in case of disaster to the ship. 



Appliances for saving life endangered at sea are of two 

 classes, one applicable to saving individual, the other to 

 saving collective lives in danger. Of the first, the various 

 improved life-belts, life-jackets, life-buoys, floating mat- 

 tresses, and portable articles of various kinds, the merits 

 of which are pressed upon public attention, it is not 

 necessary to say more than that they are well worthy 

 of attention, and that it would be a reasonable obliga- 

 tion to impose upon owners of passenger-carrying vessels, 

 that they should provide a certain number and propor- 

 tion of approved portable life-saving appliances, which 



