Year: 1873

The evidence that fixes incompetency

 or neglect on the unfortunate com

 inander of the lost vessel is terrible

 conclusive. His own story convicts

 him of both these crimes. He was ap-

 preaching coast notoriously treacher-

 ous and bristling all over with dangers.

 At midnight he judged that he was

 only forty-eight miles south from Sam

 bro Island, and he was steaming along

 at full speed, making, as he supposed,

 from eight to twelve knots an hour.

 Where, then, should have been his

 place but on the bridge? No officer of

 even ordinary prudence would run his

 vessel, on the strength of his reckoning,

 at full speed on a rocky coast, and Cap

 tain Williams, with thousand lives in

 his charge, should, even at his own

 calculations, have hovo to until morn

 ing. But Captain Williams went to

 bed! .Coolly and comfortably he ''turn-

 ed in" at midnight, and left orders to

 be called at three o'clock in the morn ing. He was called at that hour, but

 by a messenger different from the one he had expected. At three o'clock,

 when, according to this officers ''reck- oning," his vessel ought to have been about eighteen or twenty miles south of Sambro light, she ran crashing on to Mars Rock, about twenty miles to the west and seventeen miles to the north of this careful navigator's reckoning" !" Rushing on deck, he found the effect of his fatal recklessness before his eyes. He saved his own life, and four hun- dred men escaped with theirs; but, as he laments, every woman and child perished. No wonder that the com mander calls this terrible" for he must feel that the life of every lost pas senger was at his mercy, in his keep ing, was lost through his criminal in- competency or gross neglect of duty. No wonder he thinks with horror of the fate of every woman on board, from that ghastly corpse lashed in the rig ging, with it's staring but sightless eyes, its frothing lips and its fingers covered with glittering jewels, to the poor, weak mother in the steerage, pressing her ocean-born infant to her breast in the convulsive grasp of death.

 Unhappily, in this miserable medley of incompetency and blunders there does not appear to have been single officer capable of keeping sound and manageable vessel off arock- bound coast on a starlight night, or a man on board who, after the calamity happened, had the courage or the humanity to make an effort to save helpless female or child. Even the one boy saved owed his life to his importantly. His piteous cries compelled attention to his peril. It is horrible to think that two lines in our dispatches may explain the whole story: /" Some of the crew were insubordinate and beyond the control of the officers during the voyage"

 What a terrible picture is here ! A reckless, careless commander, 1ncompe- tent or needless officers, crew of ruff ans, whose first thought in the face of horrors such as might have touched the heart of savage, was the plumber of the dead Now, "what are we going to do about it?" Is this calamity to be a nine days wonder and then to pass away and be forgotten Is no punish ment to be meted out to the guilty par ties ? Is this steamship line and others to be suffered to continue to risk the lives of passengers In ships short of coal, commanded by incompetent off, cers and manned by insubordinate crews? So far as the Herald is con- cerned we shall insist upon a thorough of this terrible event and upon full exposure of the facts. We shall hold all the parties implicated to Q strict accountability, and, whether this awful calamity has been due to the greed of the company, to the criminal neglect of the officers, or to both, we shall not cease to use our earnest efforts to lay the truth before the public and to do our best to protect the lives which Inc owners and commanders of ocean steamers appear to hold at so cheap a rate.-N, y. Herald.