VISIT TO THE SOUTH COAST OUTPORTS 157 



punishment, the temptation to hurry on and make no alarm 

 is usually yielded to. Many lives are certainly sacrificed 

 every year because of this which could otherwise be saved, 

 for the fishing schooners are all wooden-built and, unless 

 mortally smitten, will float for some time. Even at the 

 worst the men can cling to planks or spars long enough 

 to be rescued if the steamer would stop to launch a boat, 

 which, of course, is always done when the collision occurs 

 while passengers are on deck or in daylight. 



"The fishermen take every ship that strikes them to be 

 a liner, but, during the last few years, the greyhound track 

 has been moved south of the Grand Bank to avoid them, 

 so fearful from these mishaps previously, and now most of 

 the tragedies are due to freighters, which swarm across this 

 area during the summer. Not a few of the unrecorded 

 disappearances there of splendid trawlers must be assigned 

 to these racing steamboats, such as the loss of the Cora 

 M'Kay, in October 1902, one of the finest vessels that 

 ever sailed out of Gloucester, which disappeared with her 

 twenty-two men under conditions which would warrant the 

 belief that she was run over and sent to the bottom. Eight 

 French smacks from St. Pierre were damaged by steam- 

 ships in 1900, and there is every reason to think that 

 three others were sunk with all hands by them the same 

 year. 



" So frequent are these collisions, that the recent comic 

 papers had a rather ghastly joke about a tourist returning 

 to America and bemoaning the uneventful passage, as the 

 ship ' ran down only one fishing smack, don't you know.' 

 All steamers are supposed to slow down to half-speed during 

 a fog, but this rule is rarely observed, and it is to its ignoring 

 that most of the fatalities are due. 



