New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1880-05-02
DOOM or THE AT4LANTA.

It3 loss OF the ualnlns-sHlp AJdluHld 10
likely to remain mystery of the sea, like the
fate of the ill-starred President. 1t is now
ninety two days since she left port, and she has
been overdue in England since the 2Oth OF
March. The log of a sailing vessel not long
ago recorded passage Of eighty-fOur days from
Bermuda to Portsmouth, and last year Nova
Scotia ship was eighty days between New York
and London but such pTOtracted voyages are
rare exceptions. Even if the Atalanta, after
beating up from Bermuda against nOrtheasterly
gales, had gone north to get the sweep of the
Gulf Stream and the trade winds, and thus pro-
longed her voyage, she should have been III port
long before this. The Admiralty still have
faint hopes that the vessel MAY have been dis
masted, and may yet br brought in by the fleet
sent out to look for her. An old man-of-wars
man re ates in one of the London journals that
Her Majesty's brigantine Viper was once nearly
thirteen weeks in making the run from Ports
mouth to Bermuda, and was complete wreck
when she finally crawled into port not only
spars and rigging but almost everything on
board needing to be replaced. 1t is barely
possible that the ATLANTA has had a similar ex-
perenCe, and that she is still ailoat under jury
masts, although she may have drifted out OF the
more frequcntcd highways of the ocean after be-
ing dsmantled in storm. Against this single
strained possibility are TO b. set hundred
probabilities that she has tOundCred.
There are many striking condolences between
the present catastrophe and the loss OF the Eu-
rydice. While they were not sister ships, they
were of nearly the same size and displacement,
and were employed as trainng-slIips Each
Ind been commissioned for this service less
than two years, elcb had made a practice voy-
age TO Bermuda, and each was returning to
Portsmouth when she went down. When the
EurydIce was wrecked there were between 800
and 319 lives lost, and, strangely enough, the
officers and crew of the ATLANTA numbered
311. The two Inflated voyages were begun
Mt the same time of year, and the Ataianta was
due i'm the Channel on the very week when the
Eurydice two years before had been swallowed
ND by the trcacherOus sea almost in sight of her
anchorage We may draw even closer lines of
narallelism, without rsking the conjecture that
the Atlanta like the Eurydicc, was struck by
small when under full SAL with her ports open,
and that her commander had disreeardcd the
warning given by the barometer. Before she
left Portsmouth for Bermuda her lower half
ports had been caulked up, III consequence of
the evidence given mt the Eulydicc court martial
that the ship would not have gone down if the
lower halves of her ports had been closed. Her
masts, moreover, had been shortened 50 that
even in fair weather she could not have carried
as much sail rs was spread 10y the Eurydicc;
and, certainly, her commander would have
watched and needed his glass when
his ship WAS in mid-occan. But these
we're both old sailing vessels, which had been
strained by many years of arduOuS service, and
their employment as trainng-Shps was some
what vemturesomc, to say the least. 1t is prob
able, moreover, that neither ship was properly
balastrd. When the EuydIce kcccd over it
was charged that casks of water had been used
in place Of ballast, and that az these were
cmpticd during the long voyage they were not
reGlled. This practice would have been dan
gerOus IN the case Of the Ataania, for the arna-
ment of sixty -four guns with which she was
once equipped had been replaced by two nine
Founders, and her carrying capacity of water
had been greatly increased to make up for this
loss of weight. While she was shorter, broader
and deeper than tho Eurydice, she might have
been almost as unsteady under the sudden
strain of a hurricane.
Yet the fact remains that the Eurydice
and the Atalanta had sailed the seas
and weathered the gales until they had
come to be regarded as among the safest YES
sells in the British navy. One of them goes
down In the twinklng of IN eye ut the moment
her voyage is ending, and the other founders
somewhere on the wayJ and hundred years
ago, off the coral reefs of the port which they
had last sighted, as many as sixteen mcn-of-
war, as we'll made and as staunCh as these two,
were wrecked in a tcmpest-a mighty feet bat
tered to pieces in an hour. The ports may be
closed, the sails may be shortened, the water
casks may be full, the ship may be new and
southland yet the disaster will come. Call it
what we may, there is an element in human
affairs which cannot be provided against, nor
reasoned out Of existence.