crews of the boats
are volunteers, and if they do not happen to report themselves at the
time of a disaster, their places are filled with any good oarsmen who
offer. In short, the whole system is based upon the occasional zeal
and heroism of men, instead of tried and paid skill, fitness for the
work and a simple sense of duty.

Our own life-saving service is founded on wholly different principles.
It dates from 1848, when Hon. William Newell of New Jersey (incited
probably by the recent terrible loss of the John Minturn, of which the
captain told us) brought before Congress the frightful dangers of the
coast of that State, and procured an appropriation of ten thousand
dollars for "providing surf boats, carronades, etc. for the better
protection of life and property from shipwreck on the coast between
Sandy Hook and Little Egg Harbor." The next session a similar
appropriation was obtained. Small houses were built and furnished,
but no persons were paid or authorized to take charge of them, and the
business was managed in the well-meaning but slipshod English fashion.
In 1854 the wreck of the Powhatan on Squan Beach and the loss of three
hundred lives produced a storm of public indignation which aroused
Congress, and twenty thousand dollars were appropriated for lifeboats,
etc. for the coast of New Jersey, and a similar sum for the ocean side
of Long Island. A superintendent was appointed for each coast and a
keeper for each of the houses, but for sixteen years no regular crews
were employed. It was during this period, too, that the petty offices
of superintendent and keeper became the reward of small village
politicians, and wreckers who, like Jacob, had worked for years
without pay in saving human life, showed their righteous indignation
at these political favorites by refusing to work under them. Several
terrible disasters in the winter of 1870 and '71 called public
attention again to the subject, and Captain John Faunce was appointed
by the department to inspect the coast and the stations. He reported
the houses as generally in a filthy, dilapidated condition, and often
so far gone as to be worthless; the apparatus rusty, and many of the
most necessary articles wanting; in some stations nothing which could
be carried away was left; the keepers were utterly unfit for
their position, and the crews which they employed worse. Yet,
notwithstanding this mismanagement and lack of system, and although no
regular official re