The Sun.
London, England, 1863-05-23 00:00:00

THIRD EDITION

SUN OFFICE, SIX O'CLOCK.

SPAIN,

A telegraphic despatch announces that
Djemil Pacha, the Turkish Ambassador in
Paris, and also accredited to the Court of
Spain, bad an audience of Queen Isabella
the day before yesterday to present his cre-
dentials. The Ambassador and his suite were
conveyed to the Palace in Court carriages with the
usual ceremonial, and the reception given to him
by her Majesty was most cordial. The Queen
charged him to convey to the Sultan the assurance
of her friendship.

THE MAIL STEAM-PACKET SERVICE.

There are now 130 Channel and ocean mail steamers
subsidised by the British Government. The mail steam-
packet service has been in existence 20 years, and during
that period about 30 packets have been wrecked, in which
upwards of 2,000 persons lost their lives, and through
which £3,000,000 worth of property was destroyed. Our
channel and ocean mail steamers traverse nearly three mil-
lion miles and carry a couple of millions of passengers in
the course of a year. Since the Atlantic has been crossed by
steam 20 steamers (mail packets and others) have been lost
in that ocean, viz., the President, Columbia, Humboldt,
City of Glasgow, City of Philadelphia, Franklin, Arctic,
Pacific, Lyonnais, Tempest, Austria, Indian, Arago, Hun-
garian, Connaght, United States, North Briton, Anglo-
Saxon, and two named Canadian. In the Atlantic two
steamers have been burnt, the Amazon and Austria, and
Iwo foundered, the President and Pacific, It is worthy of
notice that there is no record of any great inhumanity ptao-
tised at any of the wrecks of the great ocean steamers on the
part of crews over passengers, or of meu over women and
children, but there are records of deeds of heroism and huma-
nity by men in supreme peril. There is scarcely any record of
cowardice on the part of the officers of ocean steamers, but
numerous instances of skill, daring, self-command, and self-
denial. There is scarcely an instance of crews or the lower
order of passengers in mail steamers breaking open spirit
stores and getting drunk in time of shipwreck, such as we
read in old chronicles. There has hardly ever been an in-
stance of a commander leaving any one behind in a wrecked
steamer, but many commanders have lost their lives by re •
maining to the last and trying to save those under their
charge. The horrors, therefore, of many shipwrecks have
been less than they used to be, showing an improved spirit
and humanity from the spread of education amongst sea-
faring men, and the great power of public opinion. Even
common sailors now prefer to risk their lives in acts of
humanity for the sake of the goo 4 opinion of the world,
rather than have the finger of scorn pointed to them for
saving their lives by acts of cowardice or inhumanity. The
wreck of an ocean steamer, with sometimes 600 or 700
souls on board, is sufficiently horrible, without disgracful
accompaniments. The most dreadful loss of an Atlantic
steamer was that of the Austria by fire, in the
middle of tha ocean, with the greater part of

1,000 persons on board. Whole families first em-
braced each other and then, joined hand and
hand, jumped overboard, and perished. The most
melancholy losses on the Atlantic were, perhaps, the foun-
dering of the President and Pacific, n
when or where, or whether those on boa onord knows
were precisely
ously engulphed or endured the agony of seeing uncensci-
h
ap-
proach of death. Two of the most singular wreckste
in con-
nexion with mail packets were that of the Tay in the West
n
Indies, which was abandoned by the captain as a certain
wreck, while an engineer and one or two of the crew
insisted upon remaining behind and succeeded in saving
the steamer, and her owners £500,000; and that
of the Tyne, which had made a fine passage of 4,000 miles
from the South Atlantic, and when in sight of its haven, and
the passengers had voted an address of congratulation to the
commander for their safe arrivel, the ship was wrecked on the
iron-bound coast of Dorset. Almost all the wreck d mail pac-
kets were lost in fogs or in the darkness of night, through
steaming on to keep time with the mails. The fol-
lowing are the names of the ships lost by the
owners of the Anglo-Saxon, viz. :—The Canadian
(No. 1) in 1857, the Indian in 1859, the Hungin
a-
rian in 1860, the North Britain and Canadian (No. 2)
1861, and the Anglo-Saxon in 1863. Owing to the loss of
the latter, we shall rarely receive news from Cape Race. At
an immense expense the telegraph has been extended to
that point from New York, and a staff is kept at the Cape
for the reception and transmission of news. It is in con-
templation, however, to keep a fast steamer there to run
out to sea, and communicate with the European and Ame-
rican packets.