LIGHTSHIPS AND LIFEBOATS.

To understand the value of lighthouses and lightships a glance should be taken at a wreck chart-for a glance is quite enough---to see the number of wrecks which annually occur all round our coasts. Then we should appreciate the benefit which the Trinity House has conferred on Our shipping interests, and the importance of that valuable institution, whilst our thoughts must recur to the days when wreckers burnt false lights to bring to destruction the unwary. The Trinity House was originally an association for piloting ships, as early as 1512, and Henry VIII. did much to encourage pilots at Newcastle, Hull, and Deptford, by establishing fraternities or guilds for them. In the present time a Trinity pilot" retains all the dignity of earlier days. He has passed his examination, secured his licence, and thoroughly deserves his official position.

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The earliest lights were probably cressets, the kind of light used on shore to guide wayfarers; one of these used to be in the church at Barnet. Tynemouth Castle in Northumberland was well known as a lighthouse in the time of Charles I. The great light on the Eddystone rock off Plymouth was the first important and real lighthouse, especially associated with the name of Smeaton, who built it of stone about 1759. There are the two celebrated lighthouses, the North and South Foreland, and the "Lizard,” especially important as the point from which ships take their departure and lay their course; it is a magnificent light of great range, and looms for miles beyond its true light-radius. For the last twenty years the magneto-electric light has been used with great success, after experiments had been tried with earlier forms of it at Dungeness and the South Foreland lighthouses.

The Trinity House on Tower Hill has some interesting models of early lights and lighthouses and ships; and especially of the first Nore lightship, only 80 ft. long and about one hundred tons, of the date 1732. She was moored with huge hemp cables, and the lights consisted of two

LIGHTSHIPS AND LIFEBOATS

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candles, one in each lanthorne at the end of the yard; to lower, then relight and hoist, requires a cunning arrangement, with an alteration in the position of the shrouds. The starboard shrouds are before the mast and the port ones abaft the mast, so that the yard can be hoisted quite square to the mast and at right angles to the keel.

The rig of lightships varies, some of them having three, two, or one mast, according to the number of lights displayed. The single masted are most general. They are always painted red and coppered; the light which is round the mast is hoisted by very strong tackles, and every part of the vessel is constructed for strength to resist the most severe storms possible. They are generally moored with mushroom anchors; it is very seldom that a case occurs where they drag. Some two or three years ago the Warner" lightship dragged in a southerly gale, but fortunately it was only a short distance to the Hampshire coast. All lightships are rigged with a mizen, for the purpose of keeping their head to the wind, and instead of the old gong and foghorn, a syren is now generally shipped, whilst at stations like the Start Point, Lizard, and South Foreland, steam syrens are separate establishments close to the light.

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The steam lifeboat came out about 1889, with the great advantage of being on the" turbine " principle, and of not having any propeller which might get entangled with the rigging of floating topmasts or other cordage. The turbine system was very successful also as to speed, getting nine knots out of a boat when in sea-going trim on active service, with full complement of crew on board and a sufficient coal supply. For canvas she carries a trysail and staysail, also oars as a third motor if the others fail. The boat represented was the " Duke of Northumberland," being named after the president of The National Lifeboat Institution. She looks unmistakably a lifeboat all round, with her life lines all round her and the usually distinctive colouring. Her length was about 50 ft., built by Messrs. Green of Blackwall, who describe her as a hydraulic steam lifeboat."

The National Lifeboat Institution was founded in 1824, but as early as 1790 there was a great stir made at South Shields to get a successful model to adopt. Mr. Lukin had tried an iron keel to ballast them, and one was launched at Bamborough Head and saved lives. South Shields, however, was the first place to found lifeboats as a national requirement, and the lifeboats of our present Institution saved as many as 1,048 lives from shipwreck in the year of grace 1877.

THE iceboats of Holland must be accepted as the doyennes of the family. Holland is so generally acknowledged as an ice school, with its variety of gorgeous sledges, fast skaters, "kermesses" on the ice. Even fishing is added to the ice sports, when the enthusiastic piscator, having made a hole in the ice, puts up a weather screen and settles down with plenty of aniseed and milk, possibly a little Schnapps pocket pistol in case of more severe weather coming on, and makes up his mind to simple enjoyment of a piscatorial existence.

Our English climate, thanks to the genial influence of the Gulf Stream, does not favour the pastime of iceboat sailing, much less does it encourage it. Windermere is a spot where the sport is in full force directly Jack Frost gives a chance.

Iceboats are undoubtedly a specialty in North America. An Iceboat Club was formed and known as the "Poughkeepsie " Ice Yacht Club of America. Yacht club is a term which hardly coincides with our idea of the term yacht, as that implies a pleasure vessel in which the owner can live and sleep, whereas the craft in which the owner cannot live and sleep have been most appropriately named in America "day boats." The modern iceboat is to all intents and purposes really a day boat.

The day of small boats has passed away, and as speed develops with sail area and sail area necessitates length, so the iceboats have increased in length of body to 68 ft., with 1,000 square feet of canvas. This seems a small amount of canvas when we think that the Sydney boat in Australia is only 24 feet in length, with 1,000 square feet of canvas in fine weather. The pace attained, however, is very different, consequent on the difference of resistance between water and the icy surface. From all accounts, the pace of the ice yachts racing under favourable circumstances and close hauled must be terrific, and practical comparisons are made by racing with the trains as they run down the side of the Hudson River. The body of the ice yacht is really a framework in the form of a cross, travelling on three steel runners, one at each end of the cross piece to give stability, the third right aft as a rudder. The mast is placed in front of the cross piece