Death-traps of the Sea.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 12 June 1914, Page 8

Death-traps of the Sea.

In "Chambers's Journal " Mr. T. 0. Bridges describes a number of ocean death-traps or grave.\ ards of ships and sailors. He enumerates the Goodwin Sands, which cause greater destruction to sir -ping than any other reef or shoal in the world, averaging at least one wreck a month ever since the year 1099, l when the sea swallowed up the fair and fertile Isle of Lomea ; the sandbanks at the mouth of the Thauies, with their heavy toll of victims; the Hoyle Sands, the menace of 1 jvarpool Hay, with an average of sixteen wrecks a year ; the Manacles, covering 700 acres just behind the Li/.ard, with only a single black pinnacle visible at high water ; Lundy Island, on which in four months in 1886 more than forty vessels and nearly three hundred lives were lost ; the South Stack, near Holy head ; Fastnet, from which there are only two records 'of escape ; the Sable Island, pronounced by any sailor as the worst danger spot in the world's oceans, a crescent of sand ninety miles south-east of Cape Canso, o(T Nova Scotia, twentythree miles long and about a mile broad, composed of shifting sand and mostly enveloped in fogs ; Cape Race, the meeting-ground of the Gulf Stream and Arctic current, the worst place in the world for fogs, and the worst spot for icebergs.