“ Most solitary survivors from wrecks would so think themselves, and would settle down to a quiet life. Not so Ponting. He started to voyage on a sea hitherto unknown to him—bestrewn with far more wreckage than sweeps to and fro in the cross seas that wash our southern coast. Ponting went to law and sued his owners for damages. Now, law in the Supreme Court is not always without its risks, but law in the County Court and before a jury is never without its perils. We all know the result—verdict for the defendants. ”

“ To have done a job like that when the ship was lying alongside the wharf would have been, in my estimation, a very smart half hour’s work, but to do it when the ship was wallowing in the sea, now rolling to windward, and now on her beam ends, and the decks full of raging water, was simply an utter impossibility. Admitting, which I do not, that the plate could have been put on in half an hour, the ship would have been down before the job was finished! Ergo. It is much easier to do a perilous job in a witness box than have nerve enough to do it on a sinking ship! ”

“ Seamen are not saints by any means, but if there be one class of men beyond another who should, in the exercise of their calling, have things made for them as safe and as comfortable as possible, surely it is those “who go down to the sea in ships.” I use the term “seamen” in its broadest sense, including “skipper” and all, for I am not altogether a believer in the witticism of the Irishman who said, “There’s but one good billet on board of a ship and, be japers, the captain always takes it.” ”

“ Indeed, the whole subject is one which has a right to be judged alone by a very high standard, as its issues are not ordinary commercial ones, but human lives. The question of the freeboard of ships is at once one of the most important, and one of the most complex subjects connected with naval architecture. It is only just to those who have to encounter the dangers of the sea that the vessel in which they sail shall not be loaded beyond the limit of safety, and, on the other hand, the gain of the owner upon his investment may depend upon that limit being reached. ”

“ Being myself an “old salt” I was amused, if not enlightened, at the familiar jargon, and it did not require a very great stretch of imagination for me to fancy that I was for the nonce back once more amongst the “toilers of the sea.”
At the same time I must confess that I was a good deal astonished at many of the opinions given out from the witness box. These opinions—while strictly upholding the truth of the old adage, “Many men, many minds”—were no doubt well meant, and even if some of them were a little ridiculous, I daresay the various witnesses spoke “according to their lights.” ”

“ Independently of loading and rig, the longer a ship is, the less her ability to keep out of the trough of the sea; her depth is the measure of her strength to resist a vertical strain, and her breadth of beam is the measure of her strength to stand a side blow. ”

“ As nobody likes these decks, neither designer, builder, commander, or seaman, it may be asked why ships are built with them? The explanation is simply this: Every ship on entering or clearing out of a port has to pay pilotage, towage, harbour, wharf, and other dues. These dues are, as a rule, calculated on the registered tonnage of the vessel at so much per ton,—in some cases even the number of hands on board is dependent on the tonnage—and where a “well deck” occurs in a ship, being open space, it is not calculated as carrying space in reckoning the ship’s tonnage. ”

“ Purves—contend that the fact of a vessel being insured is no more proof of sea-worthiness than the fact of one being uninsured would be proof of her unsea-worthiness. Indeed, many of the finest ships afloat are not insured at all, while some of the worst “coffin” ships that ever left a port are insured “up to the mast-head,” so to speak! This position of affairs need not cause the slightest wonder, for insuring a ship is not like insuring a man. ”

“ Disaster comes to us in all forms, but the stirring story told by Robert Ponting, the survivor from the Alert, partly lifts the veil and shows us how brave men can, and do, even under the most adverse circumstances, battle to the last against the mighty raging sea which finally engulphs them. ”

“ Having had such a remarkable experience of sea and ships, it may be taken for granted that Captain Lord Brassey is a pretty good judge of what constitutes safety—so far as human knowledge can go—with regard to the shape and rig of a vessel. He is very wealthy, and, if he desired, could have his steam yacht full powered enough to be driven thirty knots an hour, but his is not a policy of “speed and smash,” it is one of “sense and security.” ”

“ Forty-four tons of cargo was not sufficient ballast for the Alert. At the same time I should say that one ship acts differently to another. One could go empty, while another would require a lot of cargo. The vessel that would go empty would have more beam and a flatter floor, or bottom, than the Alert. Amidships was the best place for the cargo, but I don’t think the Alert had stability enough for a gale of wind even if she were fully loaded. I knew the late Captain Mathieson, and thoroughly agree with the statement that he was a skilful seaman and a good master of a vessel. ”

“ So far from this being the case, that a ship really does not roll about any fixed axis whatever, it is only in scientific language that she can be said to roll about an axis at all, the axis being an instantaneous one, that is, one which is constantly changing. In the case of ships whose cargoes are badly stowed, so that as the ship rolls the cargo shifts, stability, or righting force, is largely diminished, and there is thus little or no tendency to return to the upright, the ship rolling, as it were, lifelessly about at the mercy of the waves. ”

“ How long I lay in the cave, or whether in a swoon or sleeping, I cannot say, but when my senses returned I had a vivid impression that I had just awoke out of a fearful dream. The state of my body, and a glance at the rocks around, however, soon convinced me that the incidents of the past day and night were reality indeed. I now not only felt sore and numbed, but my whole body tingled with a peculiar sensation similar to that which a person feels when his leg, or foot, is said to be “asleep.” ”

“ Freeboard has a good deal to do with the stability of a ship, and there is, probably, no department of science of which so many false notions are current, and none in which the terms employed have been so often misunderstood and misapplied. The terms stability and steadiness are popularly looked upon as synonymous, although they really have, in connection with this subject, widely different meanings, so diverse, indeed, that the presence of one in excess implies a want of the other. ”

“ A British ship means a ship owned by British people. Registration has nothing to do with the British character of the ship. The case in 10 Q. B. D., and Lord Esher’s observations there, are exactly in point here. In addition, it does not lie in the mouth of the defendants to now take advantage of their own wrong. They have continued to sail in and out of port for years, and in their answers to interrogatories they admit that their ship was a British ship, and that they were the registered [Pg 266] owners. To allow the defendants to raise this point now would be against public policy. ”

“ There are positions wherein men can report defects in anything, and get praise—as they should—for so doing, and there are also positions wherein men, on shore, if they drew attention to defects, would be instantly “sacked” from their employment, and, if on board ship, would in all probability be sent to jail as wicked designing men! I will try to give an instance in point: About three weeks after the jury brought in a verdict in favour of Mrs. Kilpatrick, I interviewed a seaman on board of a steamer then lying in the Yarra at the Australian wharf. ”

“ Speaking as one who has had many years’ experience as a seaman, I have no hesitation in saying that six out of every ten disasters which overtake ships are caused by the foolish practice of hurrying vessels out of port in an unfit condition. Many a time have I seen, and been in, ships sent away from Melbourne and elsewhere with hundreds of tons of cargo on deck. ”

“ The very first intimation, or knowledge, of the wreck of the Alert was received from the lips of Ponting, the sole survivor, as he lay on Sorrento Beach, the day after the ship had gone down, and if any human being on the shore witnessed the accident without drawing public attention to it at the time, I think he, or she, richly deserves to be indicted for manslaughter! ”

“ I reckoned we had all drifted some miles shoreward—from where the Alert had foundered—before the tide began to turn, and take our various rafts hither and thither. The seas, if possible, began to get bigger, and break irregularly in all directions around us. I caught sight of Mattison, the second officer, Thompson, the sailor, Kilpatrick, the second engineer, and Mr. Newton, the saloon passenger, all being carried by a current which I judged would take them round Cape Schanck whilst the rest of our number were going, some towards the shore, and some out seaward. ”

“ I am a marine surveyor for this port. I have had over thirty years’ experience as ship master, mostly in sailing vessels. I have been in steamships, but not in command. I have been in Melbourne about nine years. I [Pg 160] knew the Alert well, and have been frequently on board. I have been under her twice while she was in dock, not in a professional way, but as a contractor for painting. I have no reason to suppose for a moment that the vessel would be unsea-worthy. I have been a passenger in the Alert up and down to Geelong, and in a convivial sort of way I recollect the pantry window. ”

“ Purves, stated: I am a surveyor for Lloyd’s Registry of Shipping. The British Lloyd’s is an institution that has grown during the last sixty years. It is the biggest thing in the world. A vessel that is “A1” at Lloyd’s has a character that any man, who is interested in running risks, takes as a standard. The document now shown me is a certificate stating that the Alert was classed when first built “ninety A1,” fit to carry dry and perishable cargo to all parts of the world. ”

“ By the time we had been a week at sea, we were about 100 miles outside of Cape Clear, on the Irish Coast, and then got caught in a very heavy gale of head wind. For three days we lay hove to under the close reefed main topsail—a position in which some ships will ride comparatively dry, and skim the waves like a seagull—but for some reason or other our ship made what in nautical parlance is termed “very bad weather of it.” Strange as it may seem to landsmen, it is nevertheless true that ships are like men ”

“ Purves: The Ozone is a very fast boat, and we often have heavy weather going down the Bay. Sometimes we have a lot of water on the deck. Our bunker lids have something that fastens them down when they are turned round a bit. The Ozone could not jump them off, because they fit in a socket. I should think the Alert was a sea-worthy ship if she had been further at sea. It is often the case that a captain has to bring the head of his steamer to the wind and lay to; when that is done, we steam easy ahead just to keep steerage way on her. ”

“ Perhaps the jurymen who gave damages to the engineer’s widow were all wrong, according to the Act. If so, Judge Williams, their adviser, should have told them that no vessel certificated by the Marine Board, and floating comfortably on the water, can be called unsea-worthy. The lack of proper fastenings to a pantry window may be of grave consequence when the vessel gets on her beam ends, “but this defect would not be obviously dangerous,” in the ordinary way, and sea-worthiness is estimated in quite an ordinary way, says the Full Court. ”

“ Further, no vessel, whatever her length, or whether steamer or sailing ship, should be classed by the Government officials as fit to go outside Port Phillip Heads, unless she is rigged in a suitable manner to enable her to carry sail aft, as well as foreward. No doubt in these “hurry skurry” days the tendency of the time is to make steam machinery take the place of sail, but until man can control wind and waves, machinery can never wholly supersede canvas. ”