The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-09-03
sArrrv or OCEAN raAvRr.
With Modern Devices Steamships Are
 Safer Than Railway Travel.

ts With Modern Devices Steamships Are
 Safer Than Railway Travel.
 Scientific American.
 In the presence of the fearful loss oi life in accidents on our railroads 1t is with relief that we contemplate the eyer-increasing safety of travel by sea Year after year passes by without any of the important passenger steamers that cross the Atlantic Ocean, or other oceans on which passenger travel fs heavy, meeting with an accident thai causes risk of life or limb to the pas sengers. This fact Is the more re- markable when we remember that ocean travel has increased by leaps and bounds during the past decade; that not only are there more steamers fol lowing the lanes of travel, but that they are ruuning at much higher speed The mail steamers come and go with . regularity approaching that of the best railroad schedule, and 1t takes the very fiercest of Atlantic midwfnter gales to interfere seriously with this punctuality In seeking for the causes of this remarkable immunity from ac- cidents we have to look not at the nat ural, but at the human elements of the situation.
 Seas are as broad and tempestuous as ever; fogs as impenetrable as those that baff1ed the early navigators stili brood over the surface of the deep; the sunken reefs, the shifting sand bar. the variable current and many another natural cause of marine disasters still beset the path of the navigator. There fore, it is the triumphs of invention and the perfecting of human control and management that we must look for an explanation of the all but abso- lute security of steamship travel today The secret of this security Is to pc found both in the structure of the snip itself and in the marvelously ingenious devices which science and invention have placed at the service of the nav ivator to guide him in the more peril ous phases of his duty. Without emu merating those elements of water tight subdivision, vast size and better control in the ship itself, or the won derfully sensitive and refined apparatus at the command of the modern naviga- tor, We need but refer to two of the very latest safeguards, in the form of wireless telegraphy and submarine sig naling, to> show that the present ifn- munity from accidents Is traceable to clearly recognized human causes.
 The last named invention is a close rival to the wireless telegraph in the great increase that 1t has made in the safety of travel on the sea. Testimony
 
 an officer of the Kaiser Wilhelm der Crosse, upon which the new equipment is carried. We have so frequently de- scribed the device in the columns or The Scientific American that 1t Is sufii- cient to say that at the lighthouse or lightshIp there is a bell upon which signals are sounded and that upon the ship Is carried a receiving device in the form of an iron tank attached to the Inside of the plating below the wa ter line. from which wires are to be led to telephones in the chartroom or on the bridge. One receiver Is placed on each side of the ship. with separate wires from each, and by the use of the the officer Is able to hear bell that is being struck at point many miles distant from the ship ana determine it's direction
 The officer of the Kaiser Wilhelm der Crosse states that on the last trip over, when the ship was four miles distant from the mouth of the River Weser. he plainly made out the signals from the lightship there. as the vessel neared Nan tucket and when she was about four miles distant from the lightship he heard through the telephone the signal "66." This consists of six strokes of the bell, q pause, and then six more strokes of the bell which Is the Nan tuoket lightship code signal. At about the same distance from the Fire Island light and from the Sandy Hook light shin the respective signals were dis tinctly audible. The value of this de- vice in preventing collisions between ships Is evident. for 1t has this advantage over the foghorn. that inc direction of the approaching ves- ael whether from port or starboard, IS at once by the fact that Inc sounds are audible to the port or .ta rhoard telephone.