Morning journal and courier., 1881-02-17
Thursday Morning, Feb. 17, 1881.
A NEEDED SAFEGUARD.

The New York Tunes calls for better pro-
 tection of those who traverse the North At
 lantic. It argues that while in some respects
 good steamer is safer than sailing ship,
 the voyage from New York to Liverpool is
 more dangerous now than it was before iron
 Screw steamers were invented The danger
 of collision is great, there being no less than
 thirty two regular lines of European steamers
 sailing from the port of New York. The
 number of half submerged wrecks floating
 ln the tracks of steamers is constantly in
 creasing and constitutes a serious source of
 peril In the days of wooden ships it was
 rare thing for a compass to get out of order,
 but it is now still rarer for the compasses of
 an iron vessel to be perfectly trustworthy.
 The compass is affected by the magnetism of
 the ship, and that magnetism may be so
 changed by the blow of a heavy sea as to
 completely. disarrange the compass. Of course, so long as the weather is clear enough to allow the sun to be seen the error of the compass can be detected and allowance made for it; but it is not very long ago that large passenger steamer was found, at the end of two or three days of continuous thick
 AAN@-SS north of her course, owing to a Arrangement of the compass which, until then, had not been suspected. Then there are dangers arising from the peculiar structure of some steamers. If the machinery breaks down it is very difficult to steer them while under sail, since the screw dragging through the water acts as an independent and ungoverna- ble rudder. The rudder itself is peculiarly liable to be disabled, for the weakest part of the vessel is at the stern-post, where the 'fdead wood" is cut away to per init the passage of the shaft and to allow room for the screw to act No matter how well an iron ship may be built, she is 8 rigid structure in comparison with a wooden ship, which has certain amount of elasticity, and is therefore less liable to be strained while laboring in a sea-way. Finally, the iron ship has no buoyancy, and when the water gets into her interior she must inevitably go to the bottom.
 The Tunes sees no good reason why the dangers of travel in iron steamships between this country and Europe should not be less ened by patrolling the great ocean highway, and it thinks that were England and the Uni ted States each to provide two steamers the route between New York and Liverpool could be thoroughly patrolled. These government steamers could remove sunken wrecks, warn passenger steamers of the locality of ice bergs, and afford relief to shipwrecked yes sells. steamer with her machinery broken | down would be lowed free of charge by the | patrol steamer. and would not, as is now too l often the case, decline assistance in order to | save $30, 1000 or $40, GOO of salvage A ship | wrecked crew compelled to take to their boats I would have reasonable degree of confidence | that in two or three days time a patrol | steamer would pick them up, and the owners of a missing steamer would have good reason to believe that, were she in danger or dis tress, help would be not far off.
 It is plain that the cost of this work would | be inconsiderable in comparison with the I benefits that would flow from it. Probably | enough property would be saved in a single year to pay the expenses of the service for good many years, to say nothing of the saving If life