New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1873-08-16
THE DEAD OF THE WAWASET.

One word as to the Wawaset affair." before
some fresh horror pushes it quite out Of public
view. In the sight of the friends of the
victims of such a disaster as this, it is of
course no grateful nor gracious task to point
out that the fault Of the slaughter was in any
sense that of the men and women who
persisted. But what do the facts show3 Here
was boat stanchly built, manned, as we
are assured, by skillful and experienced officers,
that takes fire in broad MONDAY within a
hundred yards of land, the waite. beneath still
and only six feet deep at the bow. Those who
leaped into it here escaped with ease, we are
told, while of the men and women at the
stern nearly fifty were lost. There were five
hundred life-preservers on board, placed not
"a on some of our ferrybOats, in position
where no human agency without the aid of
ladder from land could reach them, but within
easy access of all the passengers, only one of
whom appears to have known how to use them,
and he saved his own life and that of his child.
One boat full of colored people upset from their
confusion and want of discipline, and greedy
selfishness in trying to keep the boat Tor
people of their own color. Many of the VIC
tins persisted also from the effects of abject
terror, rushing bhndly into the very middle
of danger.
Rut cowardce and seishness have slain
their thousands, like Saul, before now, and it
is hardly reasonable to ask human nature to
purge itself of its frailtes, in consideration OF
their probable effects on burning boat. 1t
is quite practicable, however, for men and
women to train themselves to an ordinary
amount of common-sense and self-control. 1t
il pitiable TO think that at the first threat of
peril we should herd together, frightened
and senseless as scared sheep, and
rush headlong into the jaws of DEATH
An instance of what GOODNESS and the self
command to apply previous knowledge will
do for a man in extremity occurred on the
Jersey coast last Winter, where schooner
with ten men on board ran aground on a bar
but short distance from land. Nine of the
ten - bold and vigorous swimmers - threw
themselves into the smooth, curling water, and
were drowned before reaching shore; the
tenth had quickness enough to detect the
cause of their failure-one of those counter
currents called a sea-puss by sailors -
and by swimming down the bar a
distance of mile further he escaped.
We remember another case Of steamboat
burning on the lower Mississippi, when a
youpg girl Zone of the fashionable, giddy
kind. too noted for nothing hitherto but her
skill in Waiting and firtation) was the only
cool, steady headed passenger among two
hundred. She saved her sisters family by
fastening life-preservers on each one, and
giving them planks, ETC., on which to float,
and finally swan to shore, carrying colored
child with her.
But we are told that the victims of this ca
tastrophe had neither the requisite GOODNESS
| nor knowledge, and there is precisely the point
we wish to urge. Here were fifty people
drowned for the lack of knowing how to swim,
an accomplishment which they could have
learned in two weeks, and of the use of q
| life-preserver, which would have cost them
ten minutes. We are migratory people, lv-
ing every year more and more in cars, on
rivers and the ocean. Yet we universally neg
lect to qualify ourselves and our children for
the protection of our lives. Physical education
is in fact not popular with our more scholarly
classes; and perhaps we do have a trihe
too much of good thing when any college
drops ITS brain work to pay due respect to its
muscles. But there is just medium to be
found even by college boys and girls, and in
that ten minutes of fatal terror and ignorance.
which of the dead of the Wawaset would not
have given all their knowledge of classic OF