each. They are capable of going closer to the wind than 

 any ordinary yacht. The spread of canvas they make is, 

 as you can see for yourselves, enormous, and they will live 

 in exceedingly heavy weather ; but they give in sometimes. 

 Three years ago the boat Jane succumbed to a fearful 

 cross sea, and sank within two hundred yards (one hundred 

 fathoms) of Penzance pierhead, and drowned her crew of six 

 men and a boy, not only within sight of their own homes, 

 but within sight of their wives and children, who knew what 

 boat she was. But even in that case, the men who knew 

 said she was lost because she had not sufficient canvas on 

 her to force her through the sea. 



If one of these boats is overpowered by the sea, she 

 takes down her spars and makes them and her nets and 

 such of her sails as she can afford to risk into a kind of 

 raft, under the slight shelter of which she rides out the 

 gale ; but you will find on the " Cornwall Stall " a sugges- 

 tion for a very great improvement in this method. The 

 exhibitor is a Cornishman, and he calls it a " floating 

 anchor." It consists of a beam of timber to which is 

 attached a large square piece of canvas, to which is attached 

 another beam of timber from which there trails away a 

 perforated zinc can which finds its place, when at work, in 

 the cavity of a cone made of canvas, fastened to a wooden 

 hoop. When the boat is storm-pressed she lowers her 

 masts, heads up to wind, and hoists the whole machine 

 out ahead of her and makes fast to the first beam ; and 

 then, being deeper in the water than the machine, she 

 drifts astern and down the wind towing the anchor, the 

 outer beam of the anchor stretches the canvas sheet, and is 

 assisted in doing this by the cone which it is dragging mouth 

 foremost. The cone meanwhile is receiving from the zinc 

 can, oil which exudes from it, and which the cone itself sends 



