NAVIGATION. 135 



the Board of Trade to make a rule requiring that 

 every British ship going to sea shall be provided 

 with this adjunct to the life buoys, a most proper 

 requirement as seems to me. Even in the best 

 found and best disciplined ships the accident 

 does sometimes happen of a man overboard. 

 The life-buoy is thrown, but in the dark the man 

 may not see it, or if he does see it and reach 

 it, and keep himself afloat by it, the people in 

 the ship, as she runs on, lose sight of him before 

 she can be brought to and a boat lowered. Till 

 now, I believe, it may be said that not once in 

 a hundred times is a man rescued who falls over- 

 board in a dark night from a large ship sailing 

 or steaming rapidly through the water. 



71. But if a life-buoy is thrown, with one of 

 these rescue lights attached to it, as I now throw 

 it, you see what happens. You see this metal 

 vessel full of phosphuret of calcium. 1 It is lashed 



1 I am indebted to Mr. Nathaniel Holmes for the following de- 

 scription of the construction of his patent Rescue Light : " I take 

 " lumps of common chalk broken in pieces about the size of lump- 

 " sugar, these are placed in a crucible with certain proportions of 

 " prepared phosphorus, and the whole is placed in a furnace, and 



