of his boat is now used by the
National Lifeboat Institution, to which the entire care of the English
life-saving service is committed. There is probably no object on which
the British nation has more zealously expended sentiment, enthusiasm
and money than this service, yet despite its grand record of work
done there can be no doubt that it has been grossly mismanaged, and
is ineffective to cope with the actual need. The roll of the National
Lifeboat Institution numbers names of the most noble, humane and
wealthy men and women in Great Britain; the queen is its patron; its
resources are amply sufficient; no pains have been spared to secure
the most scientific and perfect appliances. The whole work is made,
in a degree, a matter of sentiment--exalted and humane sentiment,
but, like all other emotional service, apt to be gusty and at times
unpractical. The man who saves human life is rewarded with silver or
gold medals: the individual lifeboats are themes of essays and song,
and when one wears out a tablet is raised with the record of its
services. It is the beautiful and touching custom, too, for mourners
to offer a memorial lifeboat to the memory of their dead, instead of a
painted window or a showy monument. But with all this genuine feeling
and actual expenditure of time and money the fact remains that the
loss of human life from shipwreck is five hundred per cent. larger
on the coast of Great Britain than on our own, although there are 242
stations on their comparatively small extent of shore, and but 104
on our whole Atlantic seaboard. In three cases of shipwreck on the
English coast in 1875 the loss of life was directly traceable to the
lack of some necessary appliance or to the absence of guards at the
stations. In one instance there were no means of telegraphing
for boats or aid: in the case of the Deutschland, as late as last
November, where the disaster occurred on a stretch of coast known as
the most dangerous in England (except that of Norfolk)--a spot where
shipwrecks have been numbered literally by thousands--there was no
lifeboat nor any means of taking a line to the ship. The secret of
these failures lies in the fact that the institution relies for its
work on spontaneous service and emotion, and is not, like ours, a
legalized, systematic business. No permanent force or watch is kept at
the stations: a reward of seven shillings is paid to anybody who gives
notice of a wreck to the coxswain of the boat. The