ng, three-fourths of the crew are almost certain to perish. We
think it far more important to construct a boat that will hardly
capsize at all, than to build one that will right itself _after_
capsizing; for we repeat our opinion, that the latter boat will prove
liable to upset just in proportion to her capability of self-righting.

Many fatal accidents have happened to life-boats; and the details of
some mentioned by the lecturer are peculiar and interesting. On the
coast of Northumberland, in 1810, one of Greathead's boats, after
saving several crews of fishing-cobles, was returning to the shore,
when a heavy sea overwhelmed her, and by its sheer weight and force
broke her in two, and the whole of the crew, thirty-four in number,
perished. In 1820, Greathead's original life-boat, after saving the
crew of the ship _Grafton_, at Shields, struck on a rock, and swamped;
nevertheless, the brave old boat--although she had not the boasted
power of self-righting--preserved her centre of gravity, and brought
both crews to land. At Scarborough, in 1836, the life-boat, in going
out to a vessel, turned completely end over end, 'shutting up one of
the crew inside, where he remained in safety, getting fresh air
through the tubes in the bottom, and was taken out when the boat
drifted, bottom upwards, on the beach: ten lives were lost.' In 1841,
the life-boat at Blyth, Northumberland, capsized, and ten men were
drowned. At Robin Hood's Bay, Yorkshire, in 1843, the life-boat
capsized, three men remaining under her bottom, while others got upon
it. The accident was seen from the shore, and five men put off in a
coble, fitted with air-cases like a life-boat; but she almost
immediately turned end over end, and two men were drowned. The
life-boat herself drifted ashore, and the three men under her bottom
were saved. In all, twelve lives were lost. But the most lamentable
disaster that ever befell a life-boat was at South Shields, on
December 4, 1849, when twenty-four men, all pilots, went off to rescue
the crew of the _Betsy_, stranded on Herd Sand. 'The boat had reached
the wreck, and was lying alongside with her head to the eastward, with
a rope fast to the quarter, but the bow-fast not secured. The
shipwrecked men were about to descend into the life-boat, when a heavy
knot of sea, recoiling from the bow of the vessel, caught the bow of
the boat and turned her up on end, throwing the whole crew and the
water into the stern-sheets. The b