Last year a class for thirty girls was begun late in the season, yet twenty-five of these were taught to swim in six lessons, and six of them won prizes.
Only five of the public baths are available for girls and female school teachers. At some of these the charge is threepence for a bathe, and at one it is a penny for members of the club. Twelve girls can be well taught in a class. For a lesson of two hours, one teacher charges fifteen shillings and another receives ten shillings, while others are paid two shillings for each girl who is taught to swim twenty-five yards, and the rest are rewarded by watches and other prizes for those who teach the most girls to swim.
Mothers and sisters who can swim will not let their boys be unwashed on the land and drowned in the water.
J. M.
The “London Schools Swimming Club” was formed in 1875, and it has already (a.d. 1880) given instruction in swimming to 12,000 boys and girls, and male and female teachers.
Footnotes:
[3] Shown by dotted lines in the sketch at p. 7. The Rob Roy is of about four tons’ burthen, but “tons,” we know well, mean one does not know what.
[10] “Swinging for the compass” is thus performed. The vessel is moored in the bight at Greenhithe, and by means of warps to certain Government buoys she is placed with her head towards the various points of the compass. The bearing by the compass on board (influenced by the attraction of the iron she carries) is taken accurately by one observer in the vessel, and the true bearing is signalled to him by another observer on shore, who has a compass out of reach of the “local attraction” of the vessel. The error in each position due to the local attraction is thus ascertained, and the corrections for these errors are written on a card in a tabulated form, thus:—
| For | Steer |
| N. | N. ¼ E. |
| N. by E. | N.N.E. |
And so on. A half point looks a small matter on the compass card, but in avoiding a shoal, or in finding a harbour, it makes all the difference.