546 



IMBEDDINQ OF THE EEMAINS OF MAN AND [Ch. XLVII. 



it would be an error to imagine that the fary of war is 

 more conducive than the peaceful spirit of commercial enter- 

 prise to the accumulation of wrecked vessels in the bed of 

 the sea. From an examination of Lloyd's lists, from the 

 year 1793 to the commencement of 1829, the late Admiral 

 Smyth ascertained that the number of British vessels alone 

 lost during that period amounted on an average to no less 

 than one and a half daily ; an extent of loss which would 

 hardly have been anticipated, although we learn from Mo- 

 reau's tables that the number of merchant vessels employed 

 at that time, in the navigation of England and Scotland, 

 amounted to about 20,000, having one with another a mean 

 burden of 120 tons.* According to Lloyd's list for the 

 years 1820, 1830, and 1831, no less than 1,953 vessels were 

 lost in those three years, their average tonnage being about 

 150 tons, or in all nearly 300,000 tons, being at the enormous 

 rate of 100,000 tons annually of the merchant vessels of one 

 nation only. 



Out of 551 ships of the roj^al navy lost to the country 

 during the period above mentioned, only 160 were taken or 

 destroyed by the enemy, the rest having either stranded or 

 foundered, or having been burnt by accident: a striking 

 proof that the dangers of our naval warfare, however great, 

 may be far exceeded by the storm, the shoal, the lee-shore, 

 and all the other perils of the deep.f 



In the wreck register for 1866^ published by the Board of 

 Trade, the number of shipwrecks and other casualties at sea 

 is stated at no less than I586O on the coast of the United 



in the adjacent seas, and the number of 

 persons drowned as 896, showing how greatly the loss 



Kingdom and 



from 



rf art. — When 



V becomes the i 



sandbank, as has been exemplified in several of our harbours, 

 and this circumstance tends greatly to its preservation. 

 Between the years 1780 and 1790 a vessel from Purbeck, 

 laden with 300 tons of stone, struck on a shoal off the 



* Caesar Moreau's Tables of the Na- 

 vigation of Great Britain. 



f I give these results on the author- 

 ity of the late Admiral Smyth, E. N. 



c 



; 





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i 



