The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-12-12 00:00:00

E4e (s,tottrbrible Oberber.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER, 12th, 1874.

THE PERILS OF THE DEEP.

The dangers of the sea have in all ages been
the theme of comment by writers who have
flourished in every clime, and who, of whatever
language, people, kindred, or tongue, have never
failed to be impressed with the grandeur of the
mighty ocean. Its great rolling billows, its foam
crested waves, its seething hills and its tumbling
valleys, seem ever to convey to the most callous
mind, and to the most torpid imagination an
idea of overwhelming force and of irresist-
ible power. Let a man possessing the highest
human intellect, and fully Conscious of the
influence which his brain exerts over his fellow-
men, take his stand upon some lofty cliff, at
either extremity of our island, overlooking the
wild wastes of the Atlantic, and he cannot but
be convinced of the impotence of man. Yet man
in all ages has ventured forth bravely to du
battle sill' the sea. True the profi sdon of a
mariner is not recorded in Holy Writ us being
of such antiquity as the occupation of a tiller of
the soil, and se arrive at tee time of Noah be.
fore we get any record of importance rela'ing to
the construction of a piece of naval architecture
The ark, we are told, took 190 years in building
a perion which must have been ample enough to
tarnish the liege structure with till the appli-
ances then known, so its to prepare, it in its
combat which the ilmod of waters which came
upon the earth, the windows of lie,veu were
opened, and it rained forty days auil forty nights.
In many places of Old 'testament story, notable
in the Psalms, the sell is referred to in beautiful
mid graphic linguage ; and we all remelt her St.
spleedi I description of the storm iii which
lie was wrecked ou his voyage to Home, mid cot
upon the silence of Malta, where the balbarous
people. he ter s its, showed the strdinied weita
icilsteajs tie ldtle kinduess. And the Bev-
,l,Liong of S• ,J,,!in, wilt,' the mei of all things
is preaent -it, ti e' I of 0, imaginative
iter, the iiieso," Acid there was II in ire
sell,'• is %II ,lo ICIIL though brief ileacrip dl.l of
the extraardia my change wditealeit in tie vi-
sions of iii. P tines exile W.th the ee flan]
icy, ilire 11 1:1" t,,121 ot the SIIII Le of slii
globe weal lii ye die ,p,t,ered, time iv 1 laive
ii nil eter,.ity 1,1211,1111.
B it it. is 111 G only in the Bible that we :ire told
of the atrennons efforts mode by the nations to
meet and overcome the manifold Foils of the
ocean. Long before til, Chiistian era the
Plueniciana had put to sea in their primeval
bares, and hail reached the ironlionnel co eat of
Cornwall ia safety, where they found In and
copper in abundance to reward their spirit of
adventure. 'llie Romans went forth to tight
upon the salt waves in their galleys of three,
four, and five hanks of oars; the Ore, ks and the
Per.dans hail many a naval conflict, and the
l'y iians are nee,rded as baying poss sail a very
,uhatantial fleet of ships. We can imagine weil
enough that with the rude work menship of those
tar-oil times, mid in the utter absence of scienti-
tic applaneete ti-actors at sea were very enemon.
Yet all the s'tely of thousands of yeara has not
enabled the 11111111 W race to compete successfully
with the penis if the vast ocean. A ship now
falls as easily a victim to the combined attacks
of the wind:, and the mires as she would have
done two thous Ind years ago. Nay, her Majesty's
ship 'amain trie mightiest vessel of war that up
to that time I. ail ever sailed the seas, was more
easily beaten iti a stitniner gale four years age,
than was the ship in which St. Paul was wrecked
and which WaS exposed to all the force of a
Euroclydon. Yet during those twenty centuries
science, which seemed to be of little avail upon
the water, hail made enormous strides upon the
land. The broad fact, however, stares its in
the face that notwithstandiug the power of steam
and the many triumphs of engineering dill', a
ship is quite :Is easily beaten to pieces now in
violent weather as at any period of the world's
history. We haven not yet forgotten the most n.
tale of thin London, a splendid A mite:than
passenger steamer which foundered in the flay
of Biscay on the llth of Jantiary, 1860. The
binibm was On iron vessel with 220 eons nit
board. Her sidea were not tot-a in by hard and
cruel rocks ; she was not struck amidships by a
sister vessel ; she simply succumbed to the on-
slanight of Om tempest Torn by the wiiiiis,
halted by the waves, the good ship at length
yielded in the struggle, and went down like ii
stone at lasi, eat rying her human cargo with her.
Precisely the same story is now told of the La
Pbti,s, which set sail for the purpose of laying a
submarine ni1,.,-, aiit W.IS thus bound noon a
missiou of piece and of civilization. Within
sixty hours of the party J electriciatm leavifig
the calm metropolitan river, full of life and of
energy, and of hope for the success of their
bitennuisieg mission, they were confronted with
death in its mom hideous form in that same Bay
of Mainly which had eneallplied the It! ,u. One
Sunday spent in comfortable 'homes with their
loved iflies emend them ; the next, vainly wrest.
hug with the litug of -terrors, then certain of