The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. THURSDAY, JUNE 25, 1914. BRITISH SHIPPING DISASTERS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 54, 25 June 1914, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. THURSDAY, JUNE 25, 1914. BRITISH SHIPPING DISASTERS.

So far as it goes the British Board of Trade’s return of shipping disasters occurring during the year ended June 30th, 1913, by comparison with previous returns, must bo considered satisfactory. The number of vessels lost during this year, including missing vessels, was 169, as compared with a yearly average during the last twenty years of 235. The number of lives lost was 361 crew and 61 passengers, as contrasted with an average of 714 crew and 209 passengers. Finally, the death-rate among seamen from all causes has fallen from 9.9 per thousand in the period 1891-95 to 4.9 per thousand in 1906-10,. and for 1912-13 it was 4.2 per thousand. When the enormous increase of British shipping is concerned—the tonnage on the register has more than doubled since 1890—these facts may reasonably be considered distinctly encouraging. The returns referred to, however, have a limitation, and include all British ships, though not all Colonial, and cover every disaster occurring in the neighbourhood of the United Kingdom. But a disaster like the loss of the Titanic in April, 1912, when 1,490 passengers and crew perished, would tremendously increase the recorded loss of 422 Jives and lift the year far above the average mortality of 923. Within its limits, however, the report is undoubtedly reassuring reading, the more so as the decline in the number of British vessels lost is on the whole steady. In 1893-4 the total was 399; in 1912-13 it was 169, the lowest figure recorded in the twenty years.