NECESSITY FOR ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION. 277 



Harwich, and Aldborough, before ten o'clock that day. Yet the crew were not taken off the 

 wreck till the following morning-, after they had been more than twenty-four hours exposed 

 to all the horrors of a pitiless easterly gale, and the momentary expectation of being swept 

 into eternity. So ill-adapted was the system of sending information along the coast that 

 the news did not reach Ramsgate till the next morning, and tug-boat and life-boat then 

 started on a gallant but fruitless expedition, to find that they had only just been fore- 

 stalled by the Harwich steamer. The Ramsgate men were thus needlessly exposed for 

 fourteen hours in a storm, with the cold so intense that the salt water froze as it fell on 

 the boat. " It is also significant/' says a writer in The Lifeboat, " that the Aldborough 

 life-boat's crew declined to launch their boat (they being fifteen miles from the wreck), 

 mainly because there were no sure grounds for concluding that the crew were still on board 

 it information which could certainly have been conveyed by the Ship-wash lightship had 

 it had an electric wire communication with the shore; or, failing that, by properly arranged 

 ' distant signals' visible to the eye." The writer shows that had the information been 

 telegraphed from the point which it actually did reach about 10 a.m., either to the Admiralty 

 or the Board of Trade, or any other public department, assistance could with ease have 

 been sent to the wreck, by orders from London, not the day after, but on the forenoon 

 of the same day. . And what might not have been the sad consequences of delay, had the 

 vessel been carrying a lot of helpless passengers instead of nine hardy seamen ? 



A case occurred shortly after the above occurrence, illustrating the necessity for prompt 

 and suitable communication with land. The steamer Vesper, of Hartlepool, was lost on 

 the Kish Bank, four miles south of the Kish light-ship. The crew of this wreck, which 

 struck the bank at 5 a.m., though only four miles from the light-ship, six of a coast- 

 guard station on shore, and seven of another point, received no assistance, nor did the 

 light-ship pass the intelligence till 10 a.m., when a boatman at Kingstown saw masts 

 sticking out of the water on the Kish Bank, with signals of distress flying from them. 

 Promptly enough then the life-boat, towed by H.M. steam-tender Amelie, proceeded to 

 the wreck, only to find, however, that on the steamer sinking the crew had taken to their 

 own boats, and being unburdened with passengers, had escaped to land. The weather was 

 moderate; had there been a gale, the story might have been far different. What a re- 

 proach to our system ! first, that the light-ship had no means of signalling for assistance ; 

 and, second, that it had no means afterwards of indicating that all hands were happily 

 saved. 



