The Ketchikan miner., 1909-02-20
PerilS That are Dread.
 ed by Seamen

principally because it is a state and not place, but if any one ocean death trap deserves the title it is the Thames estuary. The British naval edpartment has chart upon which it marks the
 position of wrecks with a black dot. On this chart the Thames mouth tract
 is a solid black spot. So numerous have been the wrecks that the dots run together. The point where the black dots actually pile on top of each other is the Kentish Knock and this is the place among all of the oceans danger spots that deserves the title of Davy Jones' locker.
 At the Kentish Knock it is not keel shattering rocks of piercing points that wreck the ocean travellers. It is sand, treacherous, olinging sand that grips the doomed ship in the grip of steel and holds it firmly while the angry sea beats it to fragments. Many vessel posted at Lloyd's as missing would be duly accounted for if the Knock sand would give up its booty. There is no hope for ship or man when father Neptune asks toll at the Kent ish Knock, for the nearest land is twenty miles away, and the nearest life-boat at Margate, thirty miles away.
 The sands of the ocean are far more dangerous than the rocks. The sand banks extend over more space, there- fore offer more points of contact than the rocks, which usually rise in one slender pinnacle. The waters flow over them in smooth waves, and there are no warning breakers.
 Next to the Thames mouth tract in point of danger is the Hugil, the salt water river on which Calcutta stands. The most trying part of large vessels voyage from New York to Calcutta is the last few miles of this calm river. In this strange river in wind- less weather and fiat, calm water ves- sells have been lost, dashed to pieces on the ever shifting sand banks by the force of the tides. The sands grasp the keel of the marked vessel, and she stops, but the tide moves on with re- lentless force, and the helpless ship is carried over on her beams ends. She oareens over and founders with all on board. One of the worst shoals in the Hugil bears the name James and Mary. It was the name of great Indian merchantman ship wrecked on the sunken sand banks.
 Another danger point dreaded by the master mariner has neither sand nor rocks, but great submarine waterfall. In the English channel there is point just beyond the Sham bles banks where there is sudden drop in the sea bottom. The channel tides sweep over the banks and down this sudden drop, creating rapids equal in fury to those of Niagara. The American ship Georgian foundered in Portland race, the name by which the danger point IS known, and all hands went down with her.
 Ships bound to New York from Europe pass quite near deadly hid den shoal which runs out from Sable Island, lying of Sable cape, in Nova Scotia. The shoal runs out for miles in five directions like the fingers of great hand reaching out for what it can destroy. When the gales blow. heavy seas boom upon the shoals with sufficient force to shatter the staunchest vessel afloat, and when the wind ceases the beaches are strewn with wreckage and the bodies of those who have perished. The distance from shore is too great and the surf too heavy for the life savers to reach struggling vessel, and few lives are saved at this point. Ten vessels have been wrecked in this trap in single day.
 The rock danger points in the ocean have nearly all been tagged, and light houses have been erected on the most dangerous-all except one. There is no light house on the Virgin rock, and there never will be. Out in the mid-Atlantic giant pinnacle rears its head up from the ocean floor and en- deavors vainly to reach the surface of the sea. It is too short by about eighteen feet. There it stands with it's sharp point hidden by the ocean waves. waioing to pierce the boltom of some unsuspectiDg vessel and send it down to join the pile Of ships ribs and dead mems bones that litter the floor at its base. The waves seem to he in league with the rock, for il yes ssl of light draft tries to pass over is head the waves shoot it down into n trough at the bottom of which the point of the rock lies waiting to rip out her keel.
 These danger spots. however, are hut anrcxes 10 the real Davy Jonf $ locker. the kentlsh Knock, that cemetery of ship ps and men where Grip- ping ghosts Ot master mariners ard their men Nit over the ruins of their
 vessels.
 Canfain Rrnwn C1ilc