mo74. | Loss of Life at Sea. 467 
whom have worked their way up from the ranks, and have 
not had equal advantages with others; therefore it is with 
unmixed satisfaction that we view the approval given by the 
Commissioners to the training ships, and the duty of the 
Government to aid such; and we still further rejoice that 
the present First Lord of the Admiralty has given official 
recognition and approval to the view of the Governmental 
obligation. 
In some respe¢ts these training ships may not be thought 
an equally good school for seamanship, but it is a far better 
nursery for the growth of bone and muscle, and far more 
for the formation of character, and for establishing moral 
and religious principles,—the only sufficient guarantee for 
good service and good citizenship,—while they receive an 
education which in every particular is germane to the duties 
they will have to perform when they are fairly embarked in 
the duties of their profession. 
- Once more, we rejoice that England is not content to 
have the residuum of other nations to man her ships, and 
still less content to play the stepmother with her own off- 
spring, but undertakes to fit them by the tens of thousands 
to fill fittingly noble duties opening the door to higher 
destinies. 
We do not know whether the Commissioners allude, in 
their opening remarks, to the agitation originated—perhaps 
not wisely, yet not without cause—by Mr. Plimsoll, when 
they say—‘‘ Public attention has been eagerly dire¢ted to 
some of the above precautions.”” Other sources of danger 
have been altogether unnoticed. ‘‘ Adding a summary of 
official enquiries into wrecks and casualties, excluding col- 
lisions, shows that from the year 1856 to 1872 inclusive, a 
period of seventeen years, while 60 ships were known to 
have been lost from defects in the vessel or in the stowage, 
711 ships were lost from neglect or bad navigation.” 
In this the Commissioners are scarcely fair, for they 
admit that these statistics are hardly reliable, and on page 4 
they prove them to be utterly worthless, for there they prove 
that during the first nine months of the operation of the 
Merchant Shipping Act, 1873 (36, 37 Vict., c. 85), out of 
286 ships surveyed, 256 were found to be unseaworthy,— 
234 from defects in the ship or equipments, and only 22 from 
being overladen.”’ 
This return shows how comparatively futile would have 
been the special provisions intended by Mr. Plimsoll’s Act 
for determining the load-line and limiting the deck loads to 
summer seasons, while his recommendation for general 
