OF ALL COUNTRIES, 83 



that during the single year 1880, 4804 fishermen and 

 seamen, and 8330 of their bereaved and helpless de- 

 pendents, received the assistance of this society ; or by a 

 glance at that simple and stern account of the ratio 

 between the number of tons of fish obtained, and the 

 number of fishermen's lives destroyed, which is given 

 upon the map of H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh. No 

 words can be more forcible, or more appropriate for the 

 conclusion of a work which deals with the history of our 

 fishermen, than those in which the Committee put forward 

 their earnest appeal to the public. " They cannot but urge," 

 they say, " that the dangers and the hardships of our brave 

 sailors — the men that is, to whom, under God, England owes 

 her proud pre-eminence as Mistress of the Seas amidst the 

 Nations of the World — have a peculiar and irresistible 

 claim upon the hearts and the sympathies of a maritime 

 people. It is impossible, the Committee feel, for those not 

 themselves involved in the frightful disaster, fully to realise 

 all the horror and woe attendant on sudden shipwreck- 

 men, women, and children, only saved, if saved at all, from 

 the terror and dismay of impending death, to be cast naked, 

 exhausted, and perhaps grievously injured, ashore ; even 

 then, it may be, still to suffer or perish in utter friendless- 

 ness, but for the outstretched hand and the speedy relief, 

 ready on the spot, through the watchful agency of this 

 Society." Surely each object of such a society as this must 

 go straight to the heart of a great maritime nation which 

 claims the wide ocean for her home and calls her fisheries 

 by the endearing title of nurseries. 



And now, patient reader, having fairly sent round the 

 plate, it is high time to say farewell. Together we have 

 experienced the hardest test which can befal a friendship. 

 All the world admits — and here at least experience con- 



G 2 



