A Lecture, Or Essay On the most efficacious means of Preserving The Lives Of Shipwrecked Sailors And The Shipwreck

7 of fallacious experiment; the meteor which leads the unwary traveller into a bog is not half so dangerous, because its effects are more limited in their operation, and by no means equally fatal in their consequences. Lieutenant Bell was a man whose name will hold a high rank as long as inventive talent is appreciated : I well remember him, when I was a cadet in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, upwards of half a century ago, and his ingenuity even then, at my early age, I beheld with admiration and delight: he certainly hit upon the same idea as myself, of forming a communication between the stranded vessel and the shore, by means of a rope projected from a piece of ordnance. But, with regard to him, the difference of the plan submitted by that officer, and that brought into use by myself, is the difference that is found often to exist between a specious theoretical idea, and a con- firmed practical truth : I can, however, safely aver, that I never heard of his invention till I had done the self-same thing- myself ; and there was this essential difference between us :—That his idea was always confined to firing from the ship, which is in itself impracticable in a violent storm, from the following circumstances : the waves dash with such fury over vessels driven on a lee-shore, that the seamen are often forced to ascend the rigging-, and lash themselves even there; with every billow that rolls in, the deck is under water ; the vessel is generally thrown on one of her sides, and the position of the deck con- sequently almost vertical ; all these circumstances present insurmount- able obstacles to the men on board preparing- the mortar for project- ing- the rope to the shore, protecting the gunpowder from moisture, preserving fire to discharge the mortar; lastly, laying or keeping- the rope in that exact order, so absolutely necessary to success. I shall therefore conclude this subject by observing, that no attempt was ever made to carry this project into effect ; although the plan was pub- lished by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c. in their Transactions for 1791, detailing the granting a reward for an expe- riment made on the river Thames. Before I proceed further, I shall first state some casualties of ship- wreck on the coast, where the plans in question have originated. It is on record, that on a dreadful night in the year 1692, upwards of two hundred vessels were driven on shore on the coast of Norfolk, and more than 1000 persons perished ; many other instances are also upon record, B 2