EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES, &c. 109 
SO severely censured — and who themselves have drank so 
deadly a draught of the same bitter cup in which so many 
participated. But the reservation of a fact, or facts, so strong- 
ly attested, would rather be blamable forbearance than chris- 
tian charity. 
On the first point stated in the letter of the jury, I make 
no remark, as legal investigations are understood to be pend- 
ing, by which the correctness of the declaration may be re- 
futed or established ; but the mere statement of the latter 
particular suggests the melancholy and observable recollec- 
tion, — that three or four of the heaviest calamities of the na- 
ture of that under consideration, with which the coasts of this 
country have of late years been visited, have all been the re- 
sults of this baneful vice of drunkenness ! And whilst three 
or four hundred lives, from this cause alone, have been pre- 
maturely sacrificed in the wrecks of passage vessels, about 
our shores, I am not aware that the accumulated misery from 
explosions of steam-boilers, and all the accidents of the sea, 
within the same period, and in vessels of the class referred 
to, has by any means equalled the same amount ! How im- 
portant then is it to underwriters, merchants and shipowners, 
yea to all "who go doAvn to the sea in ships, and all who do 
business in great waters," — that their captains, before every 
other requisite of character, should be steady, sober men ! 
And what an argument have we, for the promotion of religion 
among seamen, and for a preference in behalf of religious 
captains, in this single fact — that the want of an effectual re- 
ligious principle in the cases referred to, has not only been the 
occasion of such a fearful sacrifice of life, but has added to 
the perils of the sea, and to all the accidents to which steam- 
apparatus is liable, almost a tenfold risk i 
SUFFERINGS AND EXTRAORDINARY ADVEN 
TURES OF FOUR RUSSIAN SAILORS, 
Who were cast away on the Desert Island of East Spitzber- 
gen, in 1743. 
In the year 1 743, Jeremiah Okladmkoff, a merchant of 
Mesen, in the province of Jugoria, and the government of 
10 
