Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/495

 with foreign shipowners, who, from the many advantages enjoyed by them in the superior cheapness of their materials for building, equipping, and provisioning their vessels, and in the lower rate of wages paid to their crews, were enabled to realise profits on terms of freight which would not even cover the expenses of British ships."

The next Committee appointed to inquire into shipwrecks commenced their investigation in 1843, and the returns made up from the evidence before them show that in the previous three years the annual average loss of vessels was 611, of 128,678 tons, and 766 lives, out of 22,977 ships, of 2,908,737 tons belonging to the United Kingdom, and of 37,380 of such ships, of 6,730,242 tons entered and cleared

Brunswick to Ayr. On one occasion, a tempting freight had been offered for her to proceed to Quebec, and the owners, in conclave assembled, had all but unanimously decided to send her to that port. While, however, the discussion was going on, her skipper, Garratt, or "old Garratty," as he was called, seemed very uneasy, and gulping down an extra tumbler of rum-and-water, he at last said,—"Weel, gentlemen, should you send the Eclipse to Quebec I'll not be answerable for her safety." "How so?" asked one of the owners. "Ah," said Garratty, drawing his breath, "the charts are a' wrang in the St. Lawrence. Yee'l ne'er see the Eclipse again gin ye send her to Quebec." The skipper carried the day.
 * [Footnote: conveyance of timber from some one or other of the ports of New

It is much to be regretted that Shipowners, when they leave their captains to provide their own charts (instead of supplying them), do not stipulate that they are to be the best and the latest. I remember a ship and cargo (numerous other instances could be produced), valued at 70,000l., lost near Boulogne from the master mistaking the two lights at Etaples for the South Foreland lights; and this, as appeared by the Board of Trade inquiry, because his Channel chart, which was thirty years old, had not the Etaples lights marked on it. Indeed, it so far appears that the large passenger steamer Deutschland, whose loss at the present moment (30th December, 1875) is now in course of investigation, was steered by an old chart.]