The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-01-22 00:00:00

STEAM-PACKET SHIPTYRECirS.

During the fourteen years the Royal Mail Steam-packet
Company has been established it has lost eight ships—three in
the Gulf of Mexico, one in the Bay of Biscay, one on the coast
of Spain, and the rest in the West Indies. The value of
these ships, with the property belonging to the company on
hoard of them, was above half a million sterling. This
amount is independent of the value of the cargoes and of
the private property of the passengers that were on board
the ships. The most memorable of these wrecks were those
of the Amazon, the Tweed, the Forth, the Tay, and the
Solway. The Amazon was destroyed by fire, and all the
rest by striking upon rocks or running on shore. Two of the
commanders of the lost steamers perished with them, and
those were the captains of the Solway and Amazon. With
respect to the latter, all the officers except one went dow❑ with
her. Altogether nearly 300 persons perished in the eight steam-
ers. The loss of the Amazon was the most frightful calamity
of all. The next in its degree of horror was the wreck of the
Tweed. After about half her crew and passengers had perished,
nearly 100 despairing men were huddled together for three
days on an almost submerged islet in the Mexican Gulf,
which was surrounded and ;guarded by voracious sharks.
The Peninsular and Oriental Company has also lost several
packets ; the chief of which were the Great Liverpool, the
Tiber, and the Pasha. The Pasha was lost by a collision in
the Indian ocean ; and the Great Liverpool and Tiber were
destroyed by going on shore on the Peninsula coast. A great
loss of life accompanied the destruction of these steamers. The
commander of the Great Liverpool cemmitted suicide soon
after the loss of his vessel. Cunard's Company has, in its turn,
lost some steamers ; and Croskey's Company has lost two
ships. All of them sunk on the other side of the Atlan-
tic, but their loss was unaccompanied with loss of life.
The destruction of the Arctic steamer, one of the Collins'
line, was attended with scenes of fearful interest: This ship
was sunk near the American coast by a collision. It would
be a breach of etiquette and a mark of cowardice for the
commander of a wrecked ship not to be the last to leave it.
Shame for the loss of the ship is no doubt sometimes the
motive which has induced a captain to remain on hoard until
the last ; but a more common and equally powerful incentive,
probably is his natural love for the ship in which he has
often triumphed over the hurricane and ridden upon the
raging ocean. The only message which Captain `taller, of
the Tyne, sent to Southampton was that " he was going to
stick to his ship ; " and the old skipper of the Northern
Belle last week refused at first to be saved, as he had re-
solved to sink with his vessel. Scores of New York mer-
chants went out to welcome Captain West, of the Arctic
because he had "stuck to his ship to the last." Not ono of
the captains of the wrecked mail steamets we have mentioned
everforsook his ship until the last person on board had left it,
and in those instances where all could not get away the
commanders perished with them. A great blessing will
be the telegraph across the Atlantic in announcing any
disaster that may have occurred to an Atlantic mail
steamer. When the accidents occut red to the steamers
Atlantic, He►mann, Amazon, Solway, Tay, and Tweed,
fearful anxiety prevailed in the United States. West Indies,
and England, which would have been of short dura-
tion if there had then been any means of instantaneous
communication between Great Britain and America. The
private property of passengers lost in the mail steamers which
have been wrecked, must have been of great value. It has
been said that the Bank of England pays its expenses by the
value of the notes that are issued and never returned. A large
portion of such notes are lost in mail packets. None but those
who have lived at some packet port, such as Southampton, can
imagine the sufferings and anxiety of parents, children, wives,
and sisters, related to men and officers on board the mail
steamers which run on such hazardous voyages, nor is it easy
for a stranger to comprehend the piety and sympathy which
such anxiety and suffering evoke.—Daily

THE RAT-ELEPHANT-MIN PROBOSCIDEOR PREHENSILIS.

—The Gazette des Tribunaux gives the following strange
case :—A man named Girome, a discharged Zouave, was
yesterday tried by the Tribunal of Correctional Police for
swindling. A person, named Tiiquel, stated that he is a
great fancier of curious animals, and that the prisoner one
day came to him, and offered for sale a rat with a trunk.
As he had never seen or even heard of such an animal, he
asked to see it, and the man showed him a large rat which
had on its snout a long excrescence. He could hardly be-
leve his eyes, and to satisfy himself that he was not the
victim of fraud, he pricked the trunk with a pin ; the
animal uttered a cry, and a drop of blood fell. Con-
vinced by this that the trunk was real, he paid 50 francs
for the rat, and he subsequently gave another 50 francs
for a female, in order to increase the breed. Ha expected
to render himself famous by bringing to the knowledge of
the public a species of rat of which neither Buffon nor
any other naturalist had made mention ; but to his
mortification his two rats with trunks produced young
without any. He one day described his rats to an officer
who had served in Africa, and the latter burst into a roar of
laughter. Having asked the cause of his mirth, the officer
told him that no such things as rats with trunks existed,
and that they were an invention of the Z octaves. "An
invention of the Zouaves !" cried the perplexed naturalist ;
" why, how can that be ?" The officer then related to him
that the Zluaves are accustomed to take two rats and fasten
them to a flat board, the snout of one towards the tail of

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the other; they then cut a hole in the Snout of the second
rat and insert the tail of the first into it, they then bind
the snout up, and leave the two rats together for 48
hours. By that time the tail has become firm in the inci-
sion, and they then separate the two rats by cutting off the
tail of the first at a small distance from the snout of the
other. The second thus remains ornamented with a trunk,
and in about a month the incision in the snout is perfectly
healed, so that the trunk appears part and parcel of the
animal. Indignant at this imposture, the complainant had
the Zoave arrested as a swindler. The tribunal, however,
did not consider it swindling, and dismissed the case."
THE POET BERANGER AND THE EMPRESS EUGENTE.—It
was lately stated in the Journal de Bruxelles that the
Empress, being informed that the annual sum allowed to
Beranger by his publisher, M. Perrotin, was not sufficient
to provide for hint in his old age, had privately intimated
to M. Perrotin that she would willingly contribute from
her own privy purse enough to raise the poet's income to
10,000 f. a year; but her Majesty added that she wished the
matter to be so managed as not to let Beranger know the
source from which his accession of fortune was derived, and
to make him believe that it came from the extended sale of
his writings. The article in the Brussels journal contained
some very illiberal and insulting remarks upon Beranger,
who, it further asserted, had been informed by M. Per-
rotin, contrary to the desire of her Majesty, of the
kind littla scheme she had devised for his benefit, and
Beranger was reproached for having, notwithstanding
this, accepted her bounty, and written her a very grateful
letter cf acknowledgment. The publication of these state-
ments has drawn forth a letter from M. Perrotin, in which
he thus narrates the affair :—" Last year her Majesty the
Empress feeling uneasy about the health and the circum-
stances of Beranger, proposed to me, through a person in
her confidence, her own secretary, under a promise of the
strictest secrecy, that she should pay to my credit an annual
sum, the amount of which was to be fixed by me, and
which I myself was to give, in my own name to Beranger.
The proposal was indeed a royal one, and worthy of a noble
heart ; but I for my part had no right to accept it. It was
only Beranger who could have a right to do so, and when I
had obtained permission to inform him of the proposal
which had been made, he entirely approved of my conduct,
saying that he should not have understo “I my conduct if I
had acted otherwise. lie did more than this; he wrote me
a letter in which he expressed, in excellent terms, the gra-
titude which at the bottom of his heart he felt for the
kindness that had been shown him; and added that he bad
never been richer than he was at that moment—that he had
never needed a larger income ; and that his gratitude was
the more sincere, since he did not accept the benefits with
the offer of which he had been honoured. This is all that
has taken place upon the subject."