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Neither ships of the stanchest steel, nor seamen however skilful, nor pilots never so knowing, can wholly avoid the dangers of a seafaring life. Experience in reading the signs of the ocean and of the skies, surveyors’ charts of coasts and harbors, added to the appliances of powerful modern machinery, have lessened the perils, it is true, since the old times; yet even now ships sail proudly out of sunny havens, their topsails watched by loving eyes till they disappear at sunset, and are never seen again. On a calm day in 1782 the great hundred-gun line-of-battle-ship Royal George sank at her anchors in the harbor of Spithead, carrying down almost a thousand souls; thirty years ago the Captain, then one of the finest of England’s steam turret-ships, capsized at sea, and not a man survived. Each of these vessels was perhaps the best of its kind in the world. No better navigators exist than naval officers, yet they ran the historic old steam-frigate Kearsarge on Roncador Reef, in the Caribbean Sea, in broad daylight, and left her there a total wreck. Not a year passes that does not record some dire calamity on the ocean, and many lesser accidents.

The wild oceanic storms are responsible for fewer of these than anything else—I mean the mere power of wind and waves in the open sea. When a captain has sea-room, and knows in advance, as he almost always may, of the coming of a storm, so that he can make everything snug, the loss of his vessel, or even serious damage to her, is not common. Yet the mere violence of the gale has overturned, beaten down, and extinguished the greater part of the Newfoundland fishing-fleet again and again, and doubtless many of the ships that are recorded as “missing” have been sunk simply by overwhelming waves.

Certain rare and extraordinary mishaps nevertheless may meet a vessel in the open ocean. One of these is a stroke of lightning, powerful enough to set a ship on fire in spite of her lightning-rods, and such a fire is likely never to be quenched. Another extraordinary occurrence would be an overwhelming waterspout, such as not infrequently is seen in the tropics, especially along the Chinese coast, where it often plays havoc with fishing junks. A third unusual, yet possible, peril is the meeting with those waves of sudden and extraordinary size and volume which sometimes engulf vessels in storms that otherwise might be safely weathered, or are surmounted only by a miracle, as it were. These are said to be produced in some cyclones, as one of the effects of that whirling form of storm, and are often called tidal waves, but the tide has nothing to do with their formation or progress.

To say that a ship in mid-ocean might be destroyed by an earthquake seems paradoxical and absurd, yet it is true. Whenever a subterranean convulsion occurs beneath or at the edge of the sea, the water will be agitated in proportion to its force. Strike a tub of water a gentle tap and see how its liquid contents shiver and ripple. Watch a railway train running at the edge of a body of water, and observe how the water trembles under the percussion of the wheels upon the ground.

Earthquake shocks give rise sometimes to great disturbances, either by a direct jar to the water, or by setting in motion waves whose rolling does damage, especially in confined harbors. Sometimes a port will be suddenly invaded by a wave, the cause of which was an earthquake, which rolls in upreared like a wall, and carries death and destruction in its course. The principal port of the island of St. Thomas, in the West Indies, was once devastated by this means. The incoming wave is said to have been over forty feet high, and broke inland, destroying much property and causing many deaths. “So tremendous was this breaker that it landed a large vessel on a hillside half a mile from the harbor.”

Such catastrophes are not uncommon in volcanic districts, where the ocean retorts with terrible vengeance when it is struck by the land. That appalling explosion in 1883 of Krakatoa, in the Strait of Sunda, was followed on neighboring coasts by a series of vast billows that rolled inland, deluging a wide extent of shore, sweeping away over 150 villages, and crushing or drowning more than 30,000 persons. Within a few years the coasts of northern Japan have been inundated repeatedly by earthquake waves with similar dire calamities, and they are likely to occur again. Now and then earthquakes are felt even in the open sea, far from land. Thus, Captain Lecky, a scientific writer upon the sea, tells us that in one instance where he was present, the inkstand upon the captain’s table was jerked upward against the ceiling, where it left an unmistakable record of the occurrence; and yet this vessel was steaming along in smooth water, many hundreds of fathoms deep. “The concussions,” he says, “were so smart that passengers were shaken off their seats, and, of course, thought that the vessel had run ashore.” All this disturbance was, nevertheless, only the result of a shock at the bottom; and when the non-elastic nature of water is considered, the severity of the jar is not surprising.

It would seem as though in the vast breadth of the “world of waters,” and with nothing to obstruct the view, two ships might easily give one another a wide berth; yet a collision is one of the ever-present dangers of voyaging, even far from land. It is to avoid this peril that all the maritime nations have agreed upon certain signals, and “rules of the road” which are the same in all parts of the world, and without which it would now be almost impossible to carry on commerce or travel on the water.

The rules of the road say that when two vessels are approaching one another, head on, each shall turn off to the right far enough to avoid the other; that when two vessels are crossing one another’s courses, the one which has the other on her starboard (right hand) must turn to starboard (the right), and go behind the other vessel, while the latter continues along her course; and that a steam vessel must always get out of the way of a sailing vessel, one at anchor or disabled, or a vessel with another in tow.

It is presumed that every ship will keep a sharp lookout, and that in the daytime two approaching ships will see each other in time to keep safely apart; but in the darkness of night none could be safe unless all carried lights by which the position and character of each could be determined.

In ancient times this matter of lights at sea was a much more troublesome one than now. We know that the Roman navy managed it somehow, and had methods of signaling by lanterns and torches. In medieval and early times, say up to a couple of centuries ago, a ship’s lights were a much more conspicuous and bothersome part of her than now, when, indeed, electricity has simplified as well as perfected signaling as much as it has benefited general illumination on ship’s board. In such ships as those of the Armada, and long afterward, three huge lanterns made of ornamental iron-work, sometimes large enough to enable a man to move about inside them, surmounted the elevated after-quarter; and these were filled with dozens of great candles. How important candles were in the stores of one of these old ships is shown by the fact that we still call a merchant who outfits vessels a ship-chandler. Regular rules were formulated for judging of a ship’s position and movements, and how you ought to steer by the way these beacons grouped themselves. The introduction of whale oil gradually superseded candles and as the sperm-lamp did not require a glass house, smaller lanterns took the place of the big ones, until finally, by aid of lenses, reflectors, and kerosene, and still more lately by the use of electricity, ship’s lights have become the small, handy, and powerful ones they are to-day.

The present rules as to lights are these—using the language of a United States navy officer, Lieut. John M. Ellicott, who has written many instructive and entertaining essays on sea-affairs:

Signaling with lights is principally of use to men-of-war, where, also, lanterns hung in the rigging in a particular order have a definite significance. For long-distance signaling the best system is that invented by Lieutenant Very, U. S. N. These night-signals “consist of a white, a red, and a green star, each fired into the air from a pistol, so that by firing one, two, or three of them in quick succession and in different orders, with a pause between the groups, different letters or signal numbers can be made until a sentence is complete.” They can be easily read from vessels twelve miles away. For nearer work the system of the Spanish navy officer, Ardois, which consists in flashing and extinguishing, by means of a switchboard on deck, a series of red and white electric lamps in the rigging, serves very well; and close at hand a signal-man waves an incandescent electric bulb by night as he would a flag by day.

It is, however, when the land is approached that the sailor’s perils become menacing. Here Old Neptune is still a match for us when he asserts himself. Nevertheless, we must go upon the restless waters, and must risk a contest with their power along the coasts, where the ocean’s line of battle may be said to be. Therefore, every effort has always been made by men on land to be of aid to their brethren at sea by erecting beacons to guide them by night as well as by day, by marking the channels, so that hidden shoals, rocks, and obstructions may be avoided, and by contrivances to save life and property when the fury of the gale renders seamanship futile, and the noble ship is cast away in the surf thundering on some wild shore, to break up in a few hours.

What could be more humiliating to our pride, as well as terrifying to our hearts, than such a scene as that at Samoa, in 1889, when a whole fleet of ships, including powerful men-of-war, was wrecked while at anchor in the beautiful harbor of Apia. Of small use, then, were all their charts and lighthouses, buoys and breakwaters!

The disturbed state of affairs in Samoa caused the assemblage there, during March, 1889, of three small German men-of-war, Adler, Olga, and Eber, the British corvette Calliope, and the American steamships Trenton, Vandalia and Nipsic. The Trenton, Captain Farquhar, was one of our largest war-ships at that time, and the flagship of Rear-Admiral Kimberley; the Vandalia, Captain Schoonmaker, was somewhat smaller, and the Nipsic, Commander Mullan, was still less in size. On March 15 a hurricane demolished the whole of this fleet, except one, and ten merchant vessels besides, and caused the loss of nearly one hundred and fifty lives. It is an extraordinary story, which has been fully related by Mr. John P. Dunning, from whose article in “St. Nicholas” for February, 1890, the accompanying facts and illustrations are drawn.

Ever since men began to go to sea lights have been placed on shore to guide them to a landing-place; but in early times these were nothing more than fires on headlands, kindled, perhaps, by the wives and children of the captain and his crew of neighbors, when these mariners were expected home. These friendly services became a little more systematic when merchants began to risk their property on the water; and on the shores of the Mediterranean, which we have found to be the cradle of civilized navigation and trade, harbor-beacons were erected in very early times as guides to a safe anchorage.

The destruction of these beacons in the general smash and ruin that seem to have overtaken the world when the Roman empire went to pieces is only indicative of the way the darkness of barbarism returned and enveloped the minds as well as the works of men, until light broke through the clouds again with the rise of organized sea-powers in Western Europe. Then beacons were gradually rebuilt, but in almost all cases by private hands—the feudal lords of coast estates, the master or authorities of sea-ports, the monks in monasteries near dangerous landings, and now and then the king at his principal port, setting up marks for steering by day and lighting fires on dark nights. Most of the latter were hardly more than tar-barrels, which would burn brightly in a gale, and the better class were towers of stonework, on top of which a mass of coal was ignited in an iron cage, and kept stirred into brightness by a watcher.

It was an easy matter to imitate such beacons, and wreckers would often set up false lights. Many a fearful tradition has come down of the doings of wreckers, not only in England and Spain, but in America and in the East. One of their tricks, when they saw a ship approaching in the evening, was to hang a lantern upon a horse’s neck, and let him graze, well-hobbled, along the beach. This would appear like the rocking of a lantern on a vessel at rest—what is called a riding or anchor light; and, deceived by this promise of a safe anchorage, the stranger would not discover that he had been cheated until his keel struck a reef or sandbar, and the pirates had begun their villainous attack. It is said to have been a device of this kind which caused the wreck in 1812, on the Carolina coast,—whose islands and lagoons are reputed to have been infested by such ruffians, there known as “bankers,”—of a vessel carrying the beautiful Theodosia Burr, daughter of Aaron Burr, and wife of Governor Alston of South Carolina. Her death at the hands of these men is illustrated on page 172.

During the reign of Henry VIII of England, an association of mariners called, in short, the Guild of the Trinity was chartered and given various powers and privileges in connection with the newly instituted royal navy and dockyards. It encouraged coast-lights, and in 1573 Queen Elizabeth formally placed authority to erect and govern lighthouses and coast beacons in the hands of this corporation, and there it remains to this day; for its headquarters, Trinity House, on Tower Hill, in London, are a recognized office of the British government, answering to our Lighthouse Board.

It was not long before it encouraged the founding of a permanent light on Eddystone Shoals, a group of reefs near Plymouth, exceedingly dangerous because they lie precisely in the track of ships bound up or down the English Channel, yet almost invisible. Upon the mere standing-room afforded by the crest of this rock, Sir William Winstanley managed to erect, two hundred years ago, a tower of wood and iron trestle-work, bolted to its foundation and carrying a glass room or lantern containing a coal-grate, eighty feet above low-water mark. This was completed in 1698. One winter’s experience convinced him that it needed strengthening, and in 1699 a case of masonry was built about the tower, and made solid to the height of twenty feet, while the whole structure was increased to the height of one hundred and twenty feet. Then, it is related, Winstanley boasted that the sea had not strength enough to tear it down, and all England rejoiced in so noble a beacon; but we now know that the construction was faulty, in its large diameter, polygonal outline, excess of ornament, and lack of weight. While Sir William was within it making repairs, four years later, the memorable hurricane of November 20, 1703, swept the coast, and left scarcely a trace of the tower. Its value had been proved, however, and it was replaced, in 1706, by a straight-sided tower of oaken timbers, weighted in their lower courses by stone. This was designed by an engineer named Rudyerd, and lasted until burned down in 1755; and engineers say it was better for its place than was the round, solid-based stone tower of Smeaton that followed it, and became so celebrated. This was finished in three years, and in 1760 was lighted, not by a fire, as of old, but by candles—the first use of such an illuminant. This truly illustrious lighthouse remained until a few years ago, when it became so racked by the assaults of the sea as to be unsafe. It was then replaced by the one that stands there to-day, rivaling its magnificent neighbor on the Biscay shore opposite, the lighthouse of Carduan, which was built to support a bonfire of oak, but has remained to be lighted successively by oil-lamps, by gas-burners, and finally by electricity.

A somewhat similar history belongs to some of the lighthouses on this side of the Atlantic. The first one regularly set up in the United States was that on the north side of the entrance to Boston harbor, erected in 1716; but many others go back to Colonial days—that on Sandy Hook, for instance. Perhaps the most interesting history is attached to the light on Minot’s Ledge, in Boston harbor. This is a dangerous reef, concealed at high water and so exposed that the problem of lighting it was much the same as that presented at Eddystone, Bell Rock, Dhu Heartach, and other well known islets on the British coast.

The first lighthouse on Minot’s Ledge was built in 1848, and was an octagonal tower resting on the tops of eight wrought-iron piles sixty feet high, eight inches in diameter, and sunk five feet into the rock.

Thus, everywhere, and in all latitudes, the beacons and wooden towers and huge pyramids of long ago have given place to slender spires of solid masonry, holding powerful signals perhaps hundreds of feet above the waves, and visible as far as the curve of the earth’s surface will permit. Yet in place of the sturdy bonfire of oak, or the huge iron cage full of coals, there is only a single lamp, whose rays are gathered by deep reflectors into a compact bundle of unwasted rays, and doubled and redoubled by rows of magnifying lenses until they can dart to the furthest horizon in a strong beam of steady light. No longer does the mariner trust to his wife to kindle the tar-barrel to guide him home. He knows that nowhere is his government more watchful of its subjects than in its lighthouse service, and that he may trust to having that bright signal to welcome him in the darkness, as well as he can trust his own eyes to see it. The United States alone expends over $2,500,000 annually in looking after her lighthouses, lightships, and buoys.

Indeed, these beacons have become so thickly planted that it has been found necessary to distinguish between them in order to avoid mistaking one for another. At first this was done by doubling, as in the case of New York’s “Highland Lights,” or the twin lights of Thatcher’s Island off Cape Ann, or even trebling them as at Nauset, on Cape Cod, but now the display is made to vary. Thus some of them are simply fixed white lights; some are white and revolve—the whole lantern on the summit of the tower being turned on wheels by machinery, and the flame disappears for a longer or shorter time; while others are white “flash” lights, glancing only for an instant, and then lost for a few seconds, or giving a long wink and then a short one with a space of darkness between. Some lighthouses show a steady red light; others, alternate red and white. By these colors and varying periods of appearance and disappearance (noted on charts, and published by the government in a general seaman’s guide called the “Coast Pilot”), navigators know which light they are looking at when several are in sight. For daylight recognition the towers may be painted half black and half white, or in stripes or bands or spirals, like the big barber’s pole in front of St. Augustine, Florida.

It is impossible here to describe in detail the beautiful machinery by which the rays from the large but simple argand kerosene lamp are condensed into a single beam and projected through the Fresnel system of condensers and lenses, and by which the revolution and “flashing” are effected. Petroleum has superseded all other oils for general use, but electricity is now being extensively employed in the illumination of coast lights, especially in France, where they are introducing new principles, such as producing lightning-like flashes with a certain recognized regularity, and waving stupendous search-light beams in the sky, so that the approach to the coast may be seen when the land and lighthouse themselves are still below the horizon. If you have an opportunity to go into the lantern of a lighthouse, by all means take advantage of it; and if you can be there when a storm is raging, or when, on some misty night, the lantern is besieged by migrating birds, you will never forget the scene.

On some especially dangerous—because hidden—shoals, reefs, or bars, like those off Nantucket or the extreme point of Sandy Hook, it may be out of the question or bad policy to erect a lighthouse. Here its place is taken by anchoring a stout vessel, built to withstand the severest weather, and arranged to carry lanterns at its mastheads.

These are called “lightships,” and they are manned by a crew of keepers who have a very monotonous and uncomfortable time of it; yet in some cases men have spent twenty years or more in the service.

The most desolate and dangerous lightship station is that of No. 1, Nantucket. “Upon this tossing island, out of sight of land, exposed to the fury of every tempest, and without a message from home during all the stormy months of winter, and sometimes even longer, ten men, braving the perils of wind and wave, and the worse terrors of isolation, trim the lamps whose light warns thousands of vessels from certain destruction, and hold themselves ready to save life when the warning is vain.”

Seven years ago Mr. Gustav KobbÉ, and the artist, William Taber, spent several days on the lightship and gave a graphic account of the life there, which I wish I were able to quote in full.

The anchorage is twenty-four miles out at sea beyond Sankaty head, at the extremity of the shoals and rips which make all that space of water beyond the visible coast of Nantucket fatal to ships, hundreds of which are known to have been beaten to pieces on its treacherous bars. She is moored to a 6500-pound mushroom anchor by a chain two inches in thickness, yet she has been torn adrift twenty-three times, and has wandered widely before returning or being overtaken.

“No. 1, Nantucket New South Shoals,” to quote Mr. KobbÉ,

The actual work to be done is small, the daily cleaning of the lamps requiring only two or three hours, and other chores being very light, and the men nearly die of loneliness and “nothing to do.” It is pathetic to read how intense and friendly an interest they take in a single red buoy anchored near them; and they admit that fog is dreaded more because it hides this neighbor than for any other reason.

Mr. KobbÉ tells us that the emotional stress under which this crew labors can hardly be realized by any one who has not been through a similar experience.

This is, perhaps, the extreme picture of lightship life, but apart from the prolonged isolation and continuous roughness of the water, the experiences of the men off Sandy Hook and elsewhere are not greatly removed from it, and no philanthropy is more worthy of support than that which seeks to mitigate the loneliness of these exiles by providing them with reading matter. The Lighthouse Board provides a small circulating library for these ships, and contributions of books and files of illustrated periodicals will be gratefully received and put to good use by the Superintendent of the Lighthouse Service in Washington.

THE FOG-BELL.