486 Loss of Life at Sea. (October, 
between the bottoms are large and empty it will be necessary 
for safety to lower the centre of gravity ; it will be necessary, 
also, with the same object, to lower the centre of gravity in 
proportion as the sides are more and more loaded and 
deprived of buoyant power. 
The oscillations of wide vessels with heavily weighted 
sides are liable to carry them beyond the upsetting angle; 
for this reason, also, their centres of gravity would require 
to be kept lower. 
It will beasked, What! was there nothing in past experience 
to justify the adoption of the Froude-Reed system? No 
facts, no experiments proving its correctness and safety? 
absolutely none. 
The one complaint in which all were for long agreed was, 
that our ships were deficient in stability, from which they 
always suffered in comparison with French and Spanish 
ships. This led to the introduétion of Sir William Symond’s 
system, and the success of his ships was entirely due to their 
greater stability, which they maintained till greater stability 
was given by his opponents. 
His system was exploded because his stability was, for the 
most part, obtained by a broad plane of flotation; therefore 
his ships were more at the mercy of the waves, and their 
motions were extravagantly extensive; the more so that 
they were without a low centre of gravity to limit the range 
of motion. 
When steam was introduced the engines and boilers took 
the place of ballast in keeping the centre of gravity low, 
more necessary because of the reduced breadth to obtain 
speed economically, and necessary because of the great 
reduction of stability when the latter part of the coals were 
being consumed. 
A lower centre of gravity is necessitated in merchant 
vessels by the fact that many of them are obliged to carry 
deck loads. 
As great stability and much of it bya low centre of gravity 
was adopted as indispensable by common consent alike of 
sailors and naval architects, the result of long extensive 
and conclusive experiments, and represented by a metacentric 
height of 5 to 6 feet or more, an architect giving much less 
to a design would have been justly esteemed as foolish or 
criminally ignorant. The laws of nature being unchanged, 
how can it be otherwise now in giving metacentric heights, 
such as 2°6 feet, 2°3 feet, 2°2 feet, and even 1°5 feet under 
other much more unfavourable conditions? There was 
nothing in the facts offered in justification of the course 
pursued. 
