SAFETY AT SEA. The principal dangers to life at sea are connected with stranding, foundering, collision and fire. These dangers are being reduced year by year through improvements in the design, construction and equipment of ships and through inventions and im provements in the conditions of naviga tion, many of which are revolutionary in their nature. Radio telegraphy is finding what is perhaps its most beneficent ap plication, in communication at sea, where a ship in distress can now give notice of its danger to other ships and to shore stations hundreds of miles away; and a very recent development makes it pos sible for a ship hastening to her assis tance, to locate her not only by reports of her latitude and longitude but by the direction from which her signals are com ing. The same invention which makes this possible,—the "Radio-direction Find er"—makes it possible also for shore sta tions to guide a ship at sea and in a fog as accurately toward the entrance of the harbor she is seeking as if the lights and buoys of the entrance were plainly visible. A similar device for determining accu rately the direction of sound, makes it possible for ships in a fog to locate and avoid each other, thus enormously re ducing what is perhaps the most serious of all dangers at sea, collision in a fog. It is even proposed today to lay a wire along the bottom of a channel and, by sending through it a current of electricity, to enable a ship to follow the channel perfectly, no matter how tortuous it may be; and this in the thickest fog and with the helmsman blindfolded.
The service of weather observation and report is improving steadily and both its sources of information and the area cov ered by its warnings are being greatly extended. Dangerous storms are located almost at their origin and tracked not only day by day but hour by hour, notices being sent broadcast through the air pre dicting their future movements with such accuracy that they are easily avoided by ships which can afford the time to give them a wide berth. The latest plan of the United States weather service is to main tain a number of small vessels during the hurricane season, in the Caribbean Sea, where most of the Atlantic tropical storms have their origin, to study these storms by actually seeking them and accompany ing them on their course.
In spite of all that has been done and all that can be done to reduce the dan gers of the sea, disasters still occur and will continue to occur; and the problem of minimizing their effects is receiving more attention than was ever devoted to it in days when the dangers were far greater than at present and disasters far more frequent.
The details of construction of ships and especially of ships carrying passen gers, are prescribed by laws enforced by careful inspection which begins with the building of the ship and follows it throughout its whole career. The ship having been completed in accordance with requirements, the law looks next to the officers and crew and to the equipment of life-boats and other safety appliances. Rules cover the nature and stowage of the cargo and the depth to which the ship may be loaded. A limit is set to the num ber of passengers that may be carried, and these must never exceed those for whom accommodation is provided in life boats and life-rafts of approved type. Rules for the avoidance of collision have been drawn up through international agreement, covering as fully as possible every situation that can arise when ves sels are meeting or crossing each other's courses.
Among the most important features involved in the prescribed designs of ships, is the requirement for a thorough sub division of the ship into water-tight com partments of such size that the flooding of one or even two of these compartments through collision or stranding will leave the ship with sufficient buoyancy to re main afloat. Where communication is necessary between adjoining compart ments, water-tight doors must be fitted with arrangements for closing quickly, and in certain cases, automatically. Other requirements as to the ship itself have to do with boilers and machinery, with steering gear, with pumps and fire fighting apparatus. The rules governing life-boats are especially strict and include methods of stowing and launching,—fea tures which were too often neglected until made the subject of special rules in recent years.