The Express.
London, England, 1866-01-18 00:00:00

THE MIS 01 THE LONDON AND THE ANALIA.

The above disasters are referred to in the leading articles
of all our contemporaries this morning. The Times de-
scribes the loss of the London as one of the worst cues of
shipwreck ever known. The captain died bravely with those
whose fate was entrusted to him. As is always the cue
in these disasters, the women and children all perished.
The few who escaped were of corrals men in the fulness
of their strength. ln those moments of agony the in-
stinct of self-preservation is the only one which remains
in the human breast, and when a few desperate men
determine to take the only chance of safety and commit
themselves to an open boat in a rsging hurricane it is
conceivable that they should forget all but themselves.
Both the London and the Amalie foundered from the same
cause—namely, from the sea carrying away the engine-room
batch ad stopping the engines by putting out the fires.
Surely greater care might be taken in ►ecuring these vessels
against the shipping of heavy seas and the putting out of
the fire by the rush of water which must be looked for in a
storm. The wisdom or humanqy of putting to sea at such
a time might also be doubted. These two vessels met with
heavy gales from the very day they left port, gales which
we must presume the barometers of their captaintforetold.
The London certainly need not have taken its munitnde of
passengers to sea with the prospect of such weather at the
very outset of the voyage.
The remarks of the Daily Nam will be found unabridged
in another column.

The Post asks on what principles the hatches cover-
log the engine-rooms were constructed; whether the
lifeboats were placed in a part of the ship where they
were exposed to more thus ordinary dvger, and whether
either of these vessels wt. built in comfartments.

It would seem, the Howld observes, that after all
which has been done in the shape of government regula-
tions and well-constructed lifeboats, there is no security
that, when an emigrant or pauenger ship is in distress,
there will be any adequate provision for the deliverance
of those on board. In the cue of the Amelia
the simple want of lid coverings to the bunkers
is said to be the chief cause of the rowel having
been sacrificed, with ell the costly cargo, valued at
2C3,0001. The foundering of big ships at sea is, of all
disasters, the most fatal to the repute of our naval archi-
tects, and the catantrophe is the more fraught with die.
appointment, when it is expleined that the water did not
enter so much through an ordinary leak from below the
water-line, as through in opening in the vessel's deck
above, so that the Teasel may be said to sink for the want
of a shutter—a proper lid to a hatchway.
The Telegraph confidently asserts that the valuable lives
lost with the London might have been in safety this
very day. Not engaged in the mail service or pressed for
time by contracts, the vessel started on the 6th, at a time
when the storm signal was hoisted on ell orr coasts, and
when all over western Europe the barometer wen lower
than 30 degrees. Although the barometer continued to
drop on the 7th and Sth, the c-.pta'n, not trusting
his barometers, did not hr.' back, but waited until
the 10th. The bugle Susan Pardew was caught in
the same place in the same gale ; but knowing from
his barometers what wan approaching, her captain
made hie ship ma tight as a bottle, mid brought his own
news home to Plymouth, where the London could and
should have been on the right of the Bth or the morning
of the 9th—bad her captain acted with such circumspection
as that which we find recorded in Captain Davis's log.
" Having careful'y noted the barometer during all its
changes, I was quite prepared for everything, being con-
vinced by the movement of the nutriment and the
unsteadiness of the weather that a fearful storm was raging
to the N. of lat. 47.6 N., long. 14.48." That is a seaman•
like entry. The fact is that captains rue nothing, as a rule,
for barometers and scientific meteorology. The Tclegrap4
further urges that there should be a public testing-office for
meteorological nuts amenta close to the docks at Tower-
hill, and that underwriters should not insure vessels unless
provided with first-rate weather instruments. No fishing
village that sends a couple of trawlers out should want a
first-rate barometer; and no captain, if he an possibly
help it, should put to sea in the face of adverse signals.