22 EEPOET— 1882. 



and exports, or 500,000,000Z. of goods in the year, and of the more 

 precious lives connected with it, is a question of paramount importance. 

 It involves considerations of the most varied kind : comprising the con- 

 struction of the vessel itself, and the material employed in building it ; its 

 furniture of engines, pumps, sails, tackle, compass, sextant, and sounding 

 apparatus, the preparation of reliable charts for the guidance of the 

 navigator, and the construction of harbours of refuge, lighthouses, 

 beacons, bells, and buoys, for channel navigation. Yet notwithstanding 

 the combined efforts of science, inventive skill, and practical experience — 

 the accumulation of centuries— we are startled with statements to the 

 effect that during last year as many as 1,007 British-owned ships were lost, 

 of which fully two-thirds were wrecked upon our shores, representing a 

 total value of nearly 10,000,000Z. Of these ships 870 were sailing vessels 

 and 137 steamers. The number of sailing vessels included in these 

 returns being 19,325, and of steamers 5,505, it appears that the steamer 

 is the safer vessel, in the proportion of 4'43 to 3'46 ; but the steamer 

 makes on an average three voyages for one of the sailing ship taken over 

 the year, which reduces the relative risk of the steamer as compared 

 with the sailing ship per voyage in the proportion of 13-29 to 3"46. Com- 

 mercially speaking, this large factor of safety in favour of steam- shipping 

 is to a great extent counterbalanced by the value of the steamship, 

 which bears to that of the sailing vessel per net carrying ton the pro- 

 portion of 3 : 1, thus reducing the ratio in favour of steam shipping as 

 13"29 to 10'38, or in round numbers as 4:3. In testing this result 

 by the charges of premium for insurance, the variable circumstances 

 of distance, nature of cargo, season and voyage have to be taken into 

 account ; but judging from information received from shipowners and 

 underwriters of undoubted authority, I find that the relative insurance 

 paid for the two classes of vessel represents an advantage of 30 per cent, 

 m favour of steam- shipping, agreeing very closely with the above de- 

 ductions derived from statistical information. 



In considering the question how the advantages thus established in 

 favour of steam-shipping could be further improved, attention should be 

 called in the first place to the material employed in their construction. 

 A new material was introduced for this purpose by the Admiralty in 

 1876, when they constructed at Pembroke dockyard the two steam 

 corvettes, the Iris and Mercury, of mild steel. The peculiar qualities of 

 this material are such as to have enabled shipbuilders to save 20 per 

 cent, in the weight of the ship's hull, and to increase to that extent 

 its carrying capacity. It combines with a strength 30 per cent, 

 superior to that of iron, such extreme toughness that in the case of 

 collision the side of the vessel has been found to yield or bulge several 

 feet without showing any signs of rupture, a quality affecting the 

 question of sea risk very favourably. When to the use of this material 

 there are added the advantages derived from a double bottom and 

 from the division of the ship's hold by means of bulkheads of solid 



