SAVING OF LIFE AT SEA.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 293, 11 September 1873, Page 7

SAVING OF LIFE AT SEA.

With reference to the wreck of the Atlantic, Mr. Mark Twain has written the following letter :— " When the Mississippi was burned at sea some time ago, and nearly all her boats were smashed in the effort to cast them loose, or were swamped the instant they struck the water, I wrote a letter suggesting that ships be provided with life rafts instead of these almost useless boats. I did not expect that the Government would jump at the suggestion, and I was not' disappointed. °The Government had business on hand at the time which would benefit not only our nation, but the whole world — I mean the project of paying Congressmen over again for work which they had already been paid to do : that is to say, the labor of receiving Credit Mobilier donations and forgetting the circumstance. But that shining public benefit being accomplished, why cannot tbe Government listen to me now? The Atlantic had eight boats, of course —all steamers have. Not one of the boats saved a human life. The great cumbersome things were shivered to atoms by the seas that swept over the stranded vessel. And suppose they had not been shivered, would the case irantic peop'ie'nav^ [jiffngeo/ pen-men into each boat as it was launched? They always do. But a life-raft is a different thing. All the people you can put on it cannot swamp it. Nobody understands davit-falls but a sailor; and he don't when he gets frightened , but any goose can heave a life-raft overboard, and then some wise men can throw him after it. The sort of life-raft I have in my mind is an American invention, consisting of 3 inflated horizontal india-rubber tubes, with a platform on top. These rafts are of all sizes, from a little affair the size of your back door to a raft 22ft. long and Oft or Bft. wide. As you remember, no doubt, two men crossed the Atlantic from New York to London some years ago, on one of these rafts of the latter size. That raft would carry 120 men. Nine such rafts would have saved the Atlantic's 1000 souls, and these rafts, fully inflated and ready for use, would not have occupied as much room on her deck as four of lubberly the boats ; hardly more than the room of three of her boats, indeed. Her boats were probably 30ffc. long, 7ft. deep, and 7ft. or Bft. wide at the gunwales. You could furnish a ship with medium and full-sized rafts— an equal number of each — and pile them up in the space now occupied by four boats, and then you could expect to save all her people —not. merely a dozen or two. They would sail through a storm, sitting high and dry from two to four feet above the tops of the waves. In addition to the rafts, the ship could carry a boat or two for promiscuous general service, and for the drowning of old fogies who like old established ways. You could attach a raft to a ship with a ten-fathom line, and heave it overboard on the lee side in the roughest, and it can't fall any way but right side up), and there it will lie and ride the waves like a duck till it receives its freight of food and passengers— and then you can cut the line and let her go. But if you launch a boat, it usually falls upside down, and if it don't, the people crowd in and swamp it. Boats have somatimes gone away safely with people and taken them to land, but such accidents are rare. lam not giving you a mere landsman's view upon this raft business; they are the views of several old sea captains and mates whom I have talked with, and their voice gives them weight and value. Our Government have so many important things to attend to that we cannot reasonably expect it to bother with life-rafts, and we cannot reasonably expect the English Government to bother with them, because this admirable contrivance is a Yankee invention, and our mother is not given to adopting our inventions until she has had time to hunt around among her documents and discover that the crude idea originated with herself in some bygone time, then she adopts it and builds a monument to the crude originator. England has our life-raft on exhibition in a museum over there (the raft that made the wonderful voyage), and heaps of people have gone in every day for several years and paid for the privilege of looking at it. Perhaps many a bereaved poor soul whose idols lie stark and dead under the waves that wash the beach of Nova Scotia may wish, as I do, that it had been on exhibition on board the Atlantic."

The Napier " Telegraph " says : — "The reward offered by the Provincial Government for the destruction of hawks has resulted in the capture and death of 993 birds during the year ending the 30th June last. The reward first offered was five shillings a dozen, or fivepence p^r head, but for that sum veiy few persons were found who would take the trouble to kill a hawk, the price was therefore raised to one shilling per pair of feet — the feet beins, more easily preserved than heads — and then no hawk was safe ; as many as 333 were brought into the Treasury office in one day. Bushmeu and shepherds amuse themselves in snaring, poisoning, and shootin? these hawks. The feet are cut off and fined in the sun, and when sufficient n in bers to make it worth while are accnml it( d, they are forwarded to the Provincial Treasurer to be converted into a cheque." An enthusiastic dramatic critio says of a popular actress, that "when she ran out to me t her lover, she carried the juhole of the andiqped with her."