The Express.
London, England, 1866-01-20 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, SATURDAY EVENING, JANUARY

of passenger ships of which the arrivals are
calculated and the departures advertised to a day,
waiting twice • year for the equinoctial gales to
blow over, or declining to go to sea as long as the
weather is unsettled 1 Since the beginning of the
present year our packet and passenger service to
all parts of the world should have entirely ceased,
according to this solemn doctrine so portentously
paraded by our contemporary, for it cannot be said
that the weather has been settled since the first of
January. Has our contemporary never heard of
ships bound to the other side of the world pro-
ceeding to sea in 'search of better weather than
they leave behind them I There is not a shadow
of reason to accuse the lamented commander of
the London of sacrificing every consideration of

prudence and safety to the reputation his ship had
acquired for making quick passages. Unquestion-
ably it was part, and a principal part, of his duty,
to proceed to sea with as little delay as possible,
and to make as short and quick a passage as he
could. If such is not' the duty of every ship-
master, we should be glad to hear from
some one of the passenger and consignee clams, or
from some mail agent, how long they ran afford
to wait for a passage
Really, we are almost ashamed to ap-
pear to discuss seriously so patent an ab-
surdity. Without denying that if the ship
had not left Plymouth she would not have
gone down in the Bay of Biscay, we may
venture to remark, that according to the report of
the surviving passengers, however severe may have
been the storm in which the London foundered,
it was one in which a ship's boat could live.
Vessels of much less power than the London ma-
naged to make tolerable weather of it; the sur-
vivors were made very comfortable on board of an
Italian barque ; they sighted a brig and even a
cutter under canvas si ter the London had gone down !
Many other vessels, that must have resisted all the
fury of the gale, have since arrived in our ports ;
and it is abundantly clear that the commander of
such a ship as the London was perfectly justified
in proceeding to sea from Plymouth on that Sa-
turday morning.
Many other subsidiary questions, however,
will occur to the Court of Inquiry, which as lands-
men we can only presume to glance at with the
utmost diffidence and deference to professional
judgment and experience such as the construc-
tion, equipment, weatherly and steering qualities of
the ship ; the weight and distribution of her cargo ;
the spars she was carrying aloft in heavy weather ;
the keeping her so long steaming head to wind
against such a sea, instead of easing her away
under her fore and aft sails; the quality of
the ship's boats, and the means of lower-
ing them ; and many other questions more
or leas ignorant, or futile perhaps, but
which may be raised in the full belief that the
regretted Captain MARTIN could have an-
swered them all most satisfactorily had he
lived. There must be every disposition on the
part of the public and of the Court of Inquiry to
believe that such a ship as the London, owned by
X firm of the highest repute, was found and fitted
in the oompletest manner, for the Australian
voyage. At the same time it would be affectation
to assume that a steamer, with a mixed crew of
eighty men, can be so well prepared for
all emergencies as a ship of war of the same ton-
nage, but with a crew of some three or four
hundred men, every one of whom has his station
in the ship or the ship's boats. Nor, on the
other hand, should it be forgotten that even the
most powerful men-of-war—line-of-battle ships and
first-class steam frigates—are by no means inex-
pugnable by the sheer force of wind and ass. It
is not so many years since her MAJZSTIPIS ship
Nile was all but lost on an Atlantic voyage ; and
we have not forgotten how the famous Warrior, on
her trial cruise across the Bay, shipped a green sea

that washed out all her fires. There are hurricanes
"out of the heavens " in which the strongest ship
that was ever launched is but as a wisp of straw
upon the waters, and in manceurring to escape
from hurricanes it is precisely the moment when
resistance is abandoned and the ship is "bearing
" up," that the green seas which sweep
the deck from end to end and stave in
the strongest hatchways and stern-poste are apt
to come on board, and make an end of all things.
There is one impression, however, or prejudice,
under which we have long laboured, and which
we must confess the fate of the London has only
confirmed, and that is in favour of wood, and
against iron. There appears to be almost as great
a distinction between the loss of a wooden sb:p
and the loss of an iron ship as between a railway
and a coach accident ; and we are always reminded
of that terse and simple formula by which a passen-
ger who had suffered harm both by rail and coach
explained the distinction. In the one case, he
said, "there you are ;" in the other, " where are
you ?" No one would grant to iron ships over
wooden ships the superiority, in other respects,
of rail over coach. But for sudden and over-
whelming catastrophes commend us to iron.

OUR CONTEMPORARIES.
(THIS DAY.)

.

every experiment hem been tried by which the evil day may
ii passible be warded off. The good sense and mederatioa
of the goveranuat of Florence has induced it hitherto to
avoid any minion which might render the prolonged reten-
tion of the Quadrilateral a point of honour for Austria. If
that wise policy be pursued, the hoar of its reward cannot
be far distant. _ .

The Sear thinks that the mere statement that Mr. Byre's
despatches have SUM the month of October been to all
appearances quietly deposited in the pigeonholes of the
Colonial-Aloe, is in itself a sufficient impeachment of the
Colonial Secretary ; and, thanks to the indiscretion of Mr.
Byre, we have discovered that Mr. Cardwell has written
confidential despatches instigating the bill for destroying the
most ancient of our colonial institutions. These and any and
every document of the kind must be incorporated with the
blue-book, and the circle of inquiry must be extended to
things done anteeedently to the riots at Morant Bay upon
which the Colonial-office was consulted, and for which it
is more than probable Mr. Cardwell and his coadjutors and
predecessors were more or lees responsible.