SAN FRANCISCO SERVICE.

Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 911, 9 January 1872, Page 2

SAN FRANCISCO SERVICE.

"A Travelling Contributor," in a communication to the " Australasian, says :—The two characteristics of the Pacific are in some latitudes calms and very light breezes, in others, mostterrible hurricanes, which nothing can stand against, and these huge Noah's arks, with their enormous top hamper, and without canvas that will move them an hour through the water in a stiff breeze, are/wholly uusuited tor either. In a Pacific hurricane or New Zealand gale, the top hamper shows face enough to the wiud to turn the vessel right over, and one solid blue sea on board would sweep off everything above the solid deck as clean as a knife : nothing but the hull of the vessel would stand; all above would go like pasteboard and leave the hatches open for the next sea to sweep her. AgaiD, being without sails, suppose the boilers to burst, or the main shaft to break, and it is a very common occurrence, what then? A few days ago, when the Ajax was within 21 hours of port, a passenger made the hair of all the others stand on end by the remark, " We are now within 24 hours of Frisco, but if the shaft broke even now

wo would not reach it in two months." Query, would they reach it then ? "Wo passed through 500 iniles of sea where even the supposed everlasting swell of the ocean was at rest, as if none bat the lightest of breezes had ever blown there j and a ship from Melbourne (from which the seaman Morell was saved) was found years after by an American whaler just as they left in their terror on the reef, as if sea or breeze had never touched her since. Suppose one of these broke down out of the track of sailing ships, provisioned only ibr her usual voyage. Months, or years even, afterwards', she might be found, whole and sound by some wandering whaler, upon some out-of-the-way reef, or floating on one of these calm belts of ocean, solitary and helpless, not "like a painted ship on a painted ocean," but like a floating charnel house upon a sea of glass, under a sky of brass, with no sign of life but a few ocean birds that had made a roost of her instead of flying back a thousand miles to land. Wood and iron will fail, and according to the ordinary chapter of accidents some horrible catastrophe must sooner or later occur to vessels so unsuitable for the Pacific, and if Mr. Webb is to succeed, which I hope most heartily that he will, he must provide boats that can, in case of accident, cope with either accident or zephyr.