Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1873-04-09

The Ocean Horror.


fearful marine disaster that has occurred for
more than sixty years. The substance of
them is that on the afternoon of the last day
OF March, Capt. Williams found that in un-
favorable weather his ship was getting short
of COAL that he determined to run into Hall
fax for further supply; and that mistaking
the position of the ship, he ran upon the
rocky coast of Nova Scotia few minutes
past three o'clock on the morning of the
first Of April. OF the 976 men, women and
children on board the ship, SIT persisted !;
among this number all the women aud every
child, with tie exception of one boy.
No words of condemnation can bring back
these lives and perhaps it will never be known
on whom the blame for this aWf fate
really rests. But this blame does not belong
to the forces of nature; the ocean and the
winds and the fixed rock have no part in it
The men in charge of the Atlantic. through
ignorance or carelessness, ran her ashore, and
with thousand human lives in their Keep
ing, they had no business to be ignorant OF
so utterly needless that it calls forciby to
mind the great disaster Of the preceding
century, the loss of the Royal George IL
Portsmouth harbOr That was a case where
an English ship of the line, getting ready
for sea and lying at anchor, was, by the
shifting of her guns and loading to one side,
capslzed and sunk. The commander of tn
Royal George, Admiral Kempenteldt, was in
his cabin writing, and while the ship was
crowded by visitors from the land, his sub
ordinate officer with mulish obstinacy insist
ed on so arranging her guns that she went
down with over 600 people. This happened
on the 29th of August, 1872.
So here, in night confessed to BE- star
light, with no storm driving them to death,
these men drove their vessel on a coast which
they admit was almost unknown to them, and
they are alive, the most of them, while hun
dreds of those who trusted to them are gone
to an equally unknown but more hospitabIe
shore. 1t will he remembered that only three
months ago the A. iatic of this same White
Star line. all TWO tempestuOus voyages
across the Atlantic, started on third trip
with her machinery in an imperfect c)ndi-
ton and under circumstances that created
general alarm at the time. Mr.. Allen, one
of the cabin passengers of the Atlantic, claims
that the crew was undisciplined and just such
a class of men as we should expect would rob
the bodies of dead passengers, while Mr..
Brady, the brave third officer of the vessel
says they were an average crew. Probably
they were an average crew, but steamship
companies rad better wait till they can get
higher averIs e, even if their ships rot idle
in the docks.
People have been laughing, since the safe
passage of the Adriatic on her perilous
journey, over Mark Twain S description of the
Cunard line, the slow and sure OF course
the Cunarders are not safe from the perile
of the sea, but they go prepared for them, and
they have as yet all been brought safely into
port. And that is the thing a Cunard cap
tain is told to do; not to run his trip in s.
many days, but to take his vessel to Its
destination. This has SO far always beer
done and while we cannot be sure that the
next fearful tale will not be Of the loss OF one
of those good ships, nobody expects 1t, anC
whenever it does come We may be pretty
certain that it will not come from want o
care. Their coal will not give out, and We
are not prepared to believe tjat their cap
faip ba a10l RI hair tIp-
or that their lookouts will fail to zee
white coast line which Capt. Williams him
self thinks ought to have been visible lon.
before the Atlantic struck it.
Railroad and steamship corporat ions nav,
put into their charge, by the wholesale, tina
most precious of all freight, human life
They need more care IN the selection OF thei
servants, in holding them to a strict an
severe account for the condition of every
thing employed in the transportation of pas
sengers, and for the proper discharge o
their duties. Wherever there arc compel
ing lines, the public itself is responsible
that by its patronage it does not teach
lesson of the profit of doing thing right
and of the loss OF doing it wrong. Every
where a system of supervision over lines O
travel should insure, by the power and ez
crcise of law, that men and women, VIII
have to go from place to place, shall not
at the mercy of crazy engines, sp,eadin
tracks, rafting speed and laundering heed
lessbess. Captain Williams, asleep in hi
|,
officers and lookouts on deck trusting tha
"all's well,'' are no more culpable tina
thousands of men to-day, with like respor
sibilities upon them, and the only remedy
an organized war by mankind for it's ow
safety, against the system which admit
these things into modern business life
The loss of the Atlantic follows close 0
that of the Northfeet in the English Char
mel, on the night of the 22d of January las
when 325 lives were lost. In the last cent?
~ the loss of ships with hundreds on boar
has been no uncommon occurrence, but tw
cases only have occurred where the ocean toe
to itself more of human life than now. Or
of these cases was that of the Royal Geor2
already mentioned. The other was on Il
oath of December, 1911, when the two Fl
glish men of war, the st. George and the D
fence, were stranded on the coast of Jutland
the former vessel having a crew of $50 me
and the latter one of $780, Six of the ere
of the Defence succeeded in reaching Il
shore, and on Christmas day dozen fro
the st. George made their way to land, b.
one of these died The vessels, after beit
stranded, were washed over by the freez in
sea, and when the few who were saved lie