205 



saved 15 men. The La Plata was provided with so-called 

 life-rafts, that were stowed one above another, and duly 

 secured upon the forebridge. When the ship went down 

 the despairing crew were seen clustering round these mock- 

 ing, maddening, life-preservers (?), struggling frantically, 

 but in vain, to get them out and afloat. Sixty-four men, 

 electricians, engineers, seamen, &c., sank with the life-rafts. 

 Knowledge of the provision on board the La Plata of 

 " means for saving life " inspires us both with pity and 

 indignation for those who made the arrangements, and 

 with unfeigned grief for the hapless victims. 



The Singapore, another wrecked ship, gives this record 

 touching her boats' performances in the hour of need. The 

 ship had seven boats which, with the exception of the gig, 

 were stowed in chocks on the bridge, and covered with 

 canvas. The jolly-boat, with II persons, capsized soon 

 after leaving the ship. The majority of the crew and 

 passengers who left in the gig were also drowned. After 

 two hours' momentously precious time wasted, the attempt 

 to get the lifeboat over the side had to be abandoned. In 

 the case of the collision in the Channel between the Forest 

 and L the Avalanche, two of the three boats that left the 

 Forest were swamped, and all who were in them were 

 drowned ; the boat that survived left the ship with only 

 three oars, and with no rowlocks or rowing crutches, or 

 plug for the draining-hole in the floor. 



There is considerable variety in the horrors that attend 

 the destruction of ships at sea, but an unsatisfactory and 

 depressing uniformity in one feature the miserably small 

 part the boats perform in mitigating the disasters by saving 

 life. The loss of the Cospatrick emigrant ship, burned to 

 the water's edge in mid-ocean, near the end of 1874, was 

 pronounced at the time even a greater disaster than the 



