"One would hardly expect to find fishermen in this solitary corner of the world struggling for political preferment on the seats of a lifeboat," laughed one of the party.

But the captain could see no joke in it: "Well, sir, it's a fact that it was done. And the consequence was, the people's money was thrown away, and hundreds of human beings was left to perish within sight of land. If the administration—"

But while the captain and his companions labor over the well-trodden road thus opened, we will look into the work done in the house on the beach with the help of authorities more accurate than himself and Jacob.

Oddly enough, the first effort anywhere to stop the enormous loss of human life by shipwreck was made by that most selfish of rulers, George IV., and the first lifeboat was built by a London coachmaker, Lukin, who, it is said, had never seen the sea. After that other models of lifeboats were produced in England, none of which proved satisfactory until in 1850 the duke of Northumberland offered one hundred guineas as a prize for the best model, which was gained by James Beeching. A modification 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 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 record had been kept, there was proof that 4163 lives had been saved and $716,000 worth of property.

In 1871, S.I. Kimball, to whom the Revenue Marine Bureau was then given in charge, proceeded to completely reorganize the service. New houses were built or the old ones repaired and enlarged; competent men were appointed as keepers, and strict orders given as to the selection of experienced and skillful surfmen as crews; the houses were thoroughly furnished with every appliance requisite in time of disaster, for which the keeper is held responsible. The average distance between the stations is three miles. Immediate proof of the efficacy of the improvements in the service was given, as in the twenty-two wrecks occurring that season on the Long Island and New Jersey coasts not a single life was lost. In a word, Mr. Kimball began successfully the seemingly hopeless task of converting the dirty, ruinous station-houses and their lazy, disorderly keepers and crews, scattered along the coast, to the order, discipline and efficiency of forts and drilled soldiers, and the result proved that order and discipline, when evolved out of the worst materials, can grapple with and conquer even the sea. In 1873 the seventy-one station-houses were increased to eighty-one, the line having been extended along the coasts of Cape Cod and Rhode Island. Congress having appropriated one hundred thousand dollars for the establishment of new stations, twenty-three were contracted for, giving the Maine coast five; New Hampshire, one; Massachusetts, five; Virginia, two; North Carolina, ten. The connection between the life-saving and storm-signal service was effected at several stations, thus supplying telegraphic communication between the department and the coast outposts. This, probably, was the most marked advance made by the service: it was the nerve-line which brought the working members under control of an intelligent head. In thirty-two wrecks occurring during the year on the coasts where stations were established but one life had been lost.

The unprecedented success of the service to this point justified its demand for larger means and fuller powers. In the last session of the Forty-second Congress a bill was introduced by Hon. John Lynch of Maine to provide for the establishment of additional stations on the North Atlantic seaboard, and directing the Secretary of the Treasury to report the points on the entire sea and lake coasts at which stations would best subserve the interests of humanity and commerce, with estimates of the cost. This bill passed, and was approved March 3, 1873. The commission appointed consisted of Mr. Kimball, Captain John Faunce and Captain J.H. Merryman. Their report is the result of minute examination into the wrecks and disasters on every mile of coast for the previous ten years—a research into ghastly horrors for a practical end unparalleled perhaps in accuracy and patience. They recommended the erection of twenty-three life-saving stations complete, twenty-two lifeboat stations and five houses of refuge. The first class, containing all appliances for saving life on stranded vessels, and manned by regular crews during the winter months, were for flat beaches with outlying bars distant from settlements, and were required on certain points of the shores of the great lakes and on the Atlantic coast as far south as Hatteras. "Upon the coast of Florida the shores are so bold," the report states, "that stranded vessels are usually thrown high enough upon the beach to permit easy escape from them; therefore the usual apparatus belonging to the complete stations are not considered necessary. The section of that coast from Indian River Inlet to Cape Florida is almost destitute of inhabitants, and persons cast upon its inhospitable shores are liable to perish from starvation and thirst, from inability to reach the remote settlements." Upon these coasts it was recommended that houses of refuge should be built large enough to accommodate twenty-five persons, supplied with provisions to support them for ten days, and provided with surfboat, oars and sails. For the majority of points on the Pacific and lake coasts, where disasters were infrequent, lifeboats only were considered necessary, these in general to be manned by volunteer crews. It was proposed that these crews should be paid for services rendered at each wreck, and a system of rewards adopted in the shape of medals of honor. The estimated cost of a life-saving station complete was $5302; of a house of refuge, $2995; of a lifeboat station, $4790. A bill founded on this report was prepared by Mr. Kimball, the chief both of the Revenue Marine and Life-saving Service, and became a law June, 1874. This bill provides for the protection of the entire lake and sea-coasts of the United States by a cordon of stations, lifeboats or houses of refuge placed at all dangerous points. The stations on the Pacific coast are not yet built, but it is hoped that all will be finished and in working order by the fall of 1876. The United States will then offer to the shipwrecked voyager security and protection through her vast extent of coast such as is afforded by no other nation. The measures promoting this end were carried through Congress by Senators Newell, Stockton, Hamlin, Boutwell, Chandler and Frelinghuysen, and Representatives Lynch, Hale of Maine, Cox, Hooper and Conger. But the actual credit of this great national work of humanity is due to Sumner I. Kimball, who not only conceived the idea of the complete guarding of the coast and prepared the bill for Congress, but has reorganized the entire system and carried it out successfully in all of its minute practical details.

The work accomplished by the service may be clearly understood by a glance at the following figures. There is no record of the loss of life on stranded vessels previous to its formation in 1848. There remain only the terrible legends, such as those which the captain and Jacob told us, of numbers of emigrant ships and steamers yearly going down with three to four hundred souls on board. The coasts of Long Island and New Jersey have justly been called "the despair of mariners and shipowners." During the first twenty years of the operation of the service, despite its mismanagement, the number of lives lost yearly was reduced to an average of twenty-five. Since 1871 the period of its reorganization, the loss of life on the coasts of New Jersey and Long Island has averaged but one per annum. The report for these four years, inclusive of the whole coast guarded by stations, is—

Total number of disasters,185
Total number of lives imperiled,2583
Total number of lives saved,2564
Total number of lives lost,19
Total number of shipwrecked persons sheltered at the stations,368
Total number of days' shelter afforded,1307
Total value of property imperiled,$6,293,658
Total value of property saved,4,514,756
Total value of property lost,1,742,902

Included in this report are the fourteen lives lost on the Italian bark Giovanni near Provincetown, Cape Cod, in a storm unprecedented for its terrors. A story found its way into the papers at the time that the powder used in the mortar was damp, and that from this trifling neglect help could not be extended from the station. A strict investigation was made, and it was proved by the testimony of the people in Provincetown that all the apparatus was in perfect order and the keepers and surfmen exerted themselves heroically in aid of the doomed vessel, but that she was stranded so far from shore that it was simply impossible to reach her. In another case, that of the Vicksburg, wrecked on the Long Island coast, where a life was lost through the remissness of the keeper, the whole force of the station was discharged, and the order to that effect read to every crew in the service.