Year: 1872




Scanderia.


Up to the present date no tidings reach us
of the missing steamer Scanderia, now over
sixty days from this port for Queenstown.
This full-powered vessel left New York on the
9th Of October, in the height of the equi-
noctial season. She was we'll oficered and
manned and was well equipped with sailing
gear, for use in case Of the failure or derange-
ment Of her machinery. The mysterious
silence concerning her fate is expicable by
none of the usual arguments for the deten-
ton or drifting of disabled vessels; and the
unwelcome inference is forced upon her
agents, as we'll as upon the public, that she
has foundered and probably her whole crew
perished. The Scanderia had hardly steamed
out to Sandy Hook when an observation-disclosures
ing storm appeared on the Great Lakes. On
the afternoon of the 10th Of October it was
rapidly propagated over the New England
coast-as shown by the Signal Service
reports-and was directly in the
wake of the steamer and evidently
gaining upon her hourly. Although
this storm was not very violent along the
American coast, under the meteorological
scrutiny of the Signal Bureau, it was, doubt
less, on reaching the vicinity of Newfound-
land, where the hot Gulf Stream is encoun-
tered by the icy Labrador current, and
free, greatly intensified in cyclonic violence
and in the range of its disturbance. 1t is not
improbable that the Scanderia was overtaken
by this storm, and, if so, though well-con-
ditioned ship, she might easily have been
taken at q great disadvantage by q change of
wind and overwhelmed by stroke from such
sea as often attends the cyclone. The case
of the steamer Smidt, which, in March, 1870,
broke her screw and was drifted by wind and
wave in the vicinity Of the Azores, furnishes
no hope for the missing Scanderia. The
Smidt was only forty-nine days out from
Bremen, and, being westward bound, was
virtually moving up stream in the face
Of the torrential westerly gales that at
that season sweep across the North
Atlantic, while the unheard-from British ship
was in October moving with these gales, and,
if disabled, ought to have made some Euro





by the German to get into New York. The
facts are instructive and afford q timely warn
ing to the strongest and most confident
steamer to be on the earnest lookout for the
great waves of low pressure, as they have been
called. The weather reports indicate the gen.
Grafton of these storm centres in the Far West
and watch and proclaim their daily advance
eastward, so that u seaman, If compelled to
leave our Atlantic ports while one is approach
ing, goes to sea fully forewarned and thus
forearmed. He can observe the stealthy or
the boisterous nearing Of the dangerous me-
teer and elude it, if he only chooses. No
vessel has ever yet been built strong enough
to defy these dread phenomena Of the ocean,
and to allow himself to be overtaken in one
of them is either seaman's incapacity or his
crime.


Fortunately, in the present instance, the
missing vessel took no passengers but this
does not abate the instruction or warning
which probability gives for her fate.


THE DELAWARE HORROR. The surrender of
Professor Isaac G. West, of Dover, Del, and
his confession of the murder Of negro under
circumstances Of unspeakable atrocity, accord
ing to his own confession, naturally fill that
community with horror. In the mutilation of
the body the deed bears some relation to the
manner in which Professor Webster disposed
of the body of Dr. Parkman in Boston some
years since But the result shows that with
all their skill and ingenuity these professional
anatomists cannot conceal the horrid evil
dences of their crime from eventually coming
before the light of day