The Globe. FRIDAY, MAY 21, 1875.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 294, 21 May 1875, Page 2

The Globe. FRIDAY, MAY 21, 1875.

The loss of the Schiller, with the Australian and New Zealand mails via San Francisco on board, adds another to the list of casualties which have occurred on this mail route. It must be confessed, however, by the opponents of this expensive, and so far unsatisfactory service, that the accident by which the mails have been lost, has taken place this time on that part of the line which was considered most free from danger. The loss of any Atlantic mail boat is an event of very rare occurrence, though the number of steamers plying between England and America is enormous. We presume both from her name, and from the fact stated in the telegram that most of the passengers on board were Germans, that the Schiller was one of the great Hamburg Company’s boats, and the steamers on this line have been, as a rule, very fortunate on their passages. How the late horrible catastrophe took place we shall probably know in a mail or two, but at present the meagre telegraphic accounts merely state that the unfortunate vessel went ashore on the Scilly Islands in a fog, and that no less than three hundred and eleven souls perished. The destruction of the Cospatrick, and the loss of the Schiller will be bracketed together as two of the most disastrous accidents of modern days. The part of the affair that we are at a loss to understand, is, how the San Francisco mails ever came to be on hoard the Schiller at all. Can it be possible, that on the arrival of the mails in New York, after their passage overland from San Francisco, there was not a steamer of one of the three great lines that ply between Liverpool and America, viz, the Cunard line, the White Star line, and the Inman line, available for carrying them to England? Where was the Schiller going to land, the Australian mails she had on board? We can only suppose that her agents must have engaged to put them ashore at Falmouth or Southampton, but in this case the delay even of a day or so in New York, would have been compensated for by the extra quickness of the passage made by a boat belonging to one of the lines we have mentioned as against the length of time which is usually taken by Jthe Hamburg packets. We think it will be found, that the vessels belonging to any one of the three great companies make, as a rule, the passage across the Atlantic in from one to two days less than the time occupied by the Hamburg liners. From the telegram mentioning that no Australians were traceable among the passengers who were lost, we may infer that travellers from this part of the world by that mail, preferred to wait for one of the direct Liverpool boats in preference to proceeding by the Schiller, and in consequence they have in all probability been fortunate enough to save their lives. One thing may be safely predicted from this loss of the mails, and that is that business men will send duplicates of their letters via San Francisco, by the Suez route ; and the advantage of the second mail route from the Australian colonies to England is thus apparent.