Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/108

98 progress on the production of what may be called a water-telephone, by which he proposes to enable ships within hearing distance to communicate without wires, but still by electricity, sent and received through the water. He is said to have signaled through a mile of the Caloosahatchie River, in Florida, during his experiments made last winter.

The object of this paper is to call attention to the practical impossibility of the mariner determining, by his unassisted ears, in a fog or in darkness, the position of another ship from the noise she makes, and the necessity that he should use some of the appliances named, or better ones as they appear, to assist his ears, and thus to prevent the collisions which are now so frequent and so disastrous. The Celtic and Britannic steamers would not have run into each other had such appliances been used; nor would the steamer the City of Brussels have been run down in the English Channel by the steamer Kirby Hall had they been thus supplied, to say nothing of the steamer Oregon recently sunk off Fire Island, and other like cases within easy recollection. These vessels carried no such appliances.

It is desirable that public opinion should be brought to bear on this subject with such force that ships shall be required to carry some appliance, so that an error of five points in fixing a ship's position will no longer be possible, or, if possible, will be held to be criminal negligence.

It is also desirable that public opinion should be brought to bear on this subject with so much force that ships will be required to carry and use proper appliances for ascertaining the position and course of ships within ear-shot, as they are now required to carry lights for a like purpose.

And why should not the Federal Government take some steps in this direction, that the dread all now feel of collision at sea, in the fog or the darkness, may in some measure be eliminated?

Since the foregoing was in the hands of the editors. Senator Frye introduced into the Senate Bill No. 1851, "to provide for an international conference for securing greater safety for life and property at sea." The President, under this bill, is to invite each maritime nation to send delegates to a maritime conference, to meet at Washington in October next, and to appoint five delegates to represent the United States.

One of the duties prescribed for this conference is "to adopt a uniform system of marine signals or other means of plainly indicating the direction in which vessels are moving in fog, mist, falling snow, and thick weather, and at night."

This bill was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations,