FATALITIES AT SEA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9612, 5 October 1909, Page 7

FATALITIES AT SEA.

What a constant sacrifice attends ' the ocean journeying of the British Mercantile Marine is brought home to the mind by a -return which has just been prepared by the Eoard of Trade, shcwi lg the lives lost by wreck, drowning, or other accidert at sea in British s agoing merchant ships fcom 1891 to 1908 inclusive, says the "Pa 1 Mali Gaz.ttr." Inciden ally the return also shows how inevitably the tteamship is conquering the old sailing vessel. In 1891 the masters and sea inn emloyed on British sailing vessels numbered 63,317. Year by year th s figure has g ne down by an unbroki n continuity until we note that in 1908 tr.o number of masters and seamen finding employment in sailing vessels was only 32,478. At fie same time there has been a c irresponding increase in the numbers taking service in British, steamships. Emp oyment was found in 1891 for : E4, SIjO u.tste s and seamen on those steamships, but last year, as the Board of Trade informs us, that number lad i ;cress2d to 219,711. The toll ta'ten of .hose lives has been a heavy one. From 1891 to 1908 the total number of live 3 in merchant ships, registered in the United Kingdom, including passengers, masters and seamen, wa3 11.428. The number lost in steamships in the same period was 18,856, giving a total of 30,284 lost oi sailing ships and steamships in the eighteen years covered by the return. It is satisfactory to see that in all directions there is a marked tendency to a decreased death-rale. The total number of lives lost in merchant ships and steamships, including passengers and members of the crew, was in | 1891, 2.5G0, and this figure had fallen in 1908 to 1,139. Taking the com- ' bined service of sailing and steam, ,' we learn from the report that so far as masters and seamen where concerned there was one life loat to > every 232 persons employed.