The Express.
London, England, 1866-01-27 00:00:00

~preoo•

Litteettaemeate Intended toe " The Eryresa" Madam Evealng
, t be at the Mee, 10, nvertwelioet, by Two
:•=1 rawi
ow the day of publication.

HAYYAIIIL

nue warm BILOTHSH SAIL Hamm Sothern, Bock-
*ono, and Compton ; %men Nally Moore, Snowdon, &c.—
ORPHIMS IN TEM HAYKARICHT. Mean linen k D. Mahn ;
Wows Looloy, Howard & Wright. —MY HIIBBANDH GHOST.

"Bar 9y&

- -
Tarn SVENING, QM= LODGINGS.—After which IT 18
mzvaa TOO LATZ TO MIND. Mews. Vining, a. Malvin*,
T. Mead, D. Murray b. Callsaam, Villiera J, G. Shore, G. Mur-
ray, and IL Cathcart: Mims L. Moore rod L Rodaras.

LYCIRTY.

Tate snimra THE ILLIISTRIOtI3 STRANGER. Mr. H.
Wlddicomit—THE MASTER OF RAVINSWOOD. M..n
Yachter. Jordat Veda. Emery, Widdlcomb, Fitzpatrick. Evaos ;
Mapisatas Terusa.Unworthy, Lamm, C. laciercq.

BRITANNIA.

THIS Velma, OLD DADDY LONGLEGS AND SIR REGENT
CIRCUS: OR, THE GOLDEN APPLISe. —IL and Madame
Biertzentselt —Signor RevaaL —01=r:45110os? of Golden Rath.
—Johany Day.—And J/ISSIZ, THE MORMON'S DAUGHTER.

HIGHWATTIL AT LONDON-paI:DM

Dm DATZOOOmi 106. 00.— Aftimeoo Ilk. 00.
T 04101111011—• 3100/6, O. Om. OIL 60.

LONDON. SATURDAY. JANUARY 27.

A CONTIMPOItABY has taken advantage of the
loss of the London, or rather of the confused panic
which that lamentable mischance has created in
the public mind, to oppose; on the ground of the
public safety, the very moderate and reasonable
demand of the owners and commanders of the
merchant navy represented at the public
meeting in the City last week. We shall
also venture, on behalf of that most estimable body
of men, to take that great disaster as a text, but to
draw from it a very different moral. On Monday
next the Board of Trade will commence an official
inquiry into the circumstances attending the loss
of the London, and there can be no doubt that the
proceedings of the court will be as anxiously and
attentively perused by newspaper readers as the
most "painful" of cases in • court of law.
Too many Englishmen and Englishwomen are at
one time or another passengers at sea to permit
of inch an inquiry being purely formal in cha-
racter and exclusively professional in interest.
Thousands of possible passengers will be as eager for
an official assurance that the catastrophe was due
to some preventible cause, as railway travellers
are to hear of " swingeing" damages being awarded
by a jury to the victim of an "accident." Nor is
this disposition of the public mind to be ascribed
to any lower instinct than that of self-preservation.
Let us see, then, how this Court of Inquiry into
the loss of the London will be constituted. It
will be hold in the Greenwich police-court, and
presided over ex officio by the magistrate
of the district. The Board of Trade will be
represented by the Solicitor of that department,
who in some sort acts as public prosecutor ; and
the magistrate of the district will be assisted
by "two Nautical Assessors." Such is the Court
that will proceed to examine the nineteen sur-
vivors of the ship's company and passengers of the
London ; and unless the course of the inquiry is
quite unprecedented and unparalleled, a strange
medley of confused and contradictory "evidence "
will be the upshot of the conscientious ex-
ertions of the Board of Trade and its Nautical As-
sessors to elicit facts from the seamen and to
record the impressions of the passengers. We shall
hope to hear all about the passage of the London
from Blackwell to Gravesend, from Gravesend to
Portsmouth, from Portsmouth to Plymouth, and
from Plymouth to the fatal Bay in which she
foundered, the state of the weather, the force and
variation of the wind, the reasons of the lamented
Captain (according to the survivors) for proceeding
to sea from Plymouth when he did, the amount
and description of cargo the ship was carrying
and where and how it was stowed, and how the
ship was " handled," as to spars, sails, steering,
steam power, from the beginning of the gale to the
moment when the ship bore up and became un-
manageable ; how she was equipped as to boats
and their lowering apparatus, what sort of crew
she had and how they behaved, and so forth. On
these leading points the ingenuity of the Solicitor
will be employed in sifting the memories of the
passengers and in searching those of the crew. It
is obvious that where so few of all that were on
board, and neither the commander nor any of his
executive officers are present, the " evidence "
can only be of • secondary and imperfect value.
Such as it is, it will be elicited by a magistrate
and a lawyer, and by two careful and conscien-
tious nautical gentlemen, whose professional sense
of nautical risks has been sharpened by long ab-
sence from the sea, and whose professional experi-
ence was not obtained iu the command of Austra-
lian passenger .steamers. But the question which
lies at the root of the whole inquiry, and which
involves the largest considerations, is one which it
needs neither the impressions of the surviving
seamen nor of the surviving passengers
of the London to answer ; and that is as
to the construction of the ship ; her length
of keel and over all, her breadth of beam,
her depth of water line. These details are
at the command of the Board of Trade without
holding any inquiry at all---they are registered
and public. The construction of passenger
steamers is a question which deserves a far wider
and deeper inquiry than the Greenwich Police-court,
at the instance of the Board of Trade, is capable of
instituting. It is perhaps • question foraroyal com-
mission, or at least a parliamentary committee. But
the case of the London, as it will be presented to