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wards of salvage. In England and America the amount of salvage rests with the judge of the Admiralty Court, who determines it after hearing the evidence which shows the value of the service rendered. The rules which govern the proceedings of admiralty courts are explicit.

There is no obligation upon the master of any vessel to heed signals of distress. He may go upon his way as if no call for aid had been made, and the law cannot touch him. But there are few instances of masters having done this without some excuse. And the unwritten law which says that a call for help at sea must be obeyed, is most powerful, being enforced by public opinion. Every master knows that danger may come to him and his vessel, and that it would not be well for him if he had ever disobeyed this unwritten law. The laws of salvage are in existence to encourage endeavors to save life and property at sea. At the same time, the laws have in mind the danger of exciting the avarice of masters and owners, and have made strict provision for justice. to both sides. For instance, under all but the most extraordinary circumstances, a master and crew cannot get salvage for saving their own vessel. It is supposed that they must do everything in their power to save it and to keep it from danger under their contract with the owners, and the law has been careful not to give them a chance to put the ship in peril, so that they may profit by its rescue. Any exorbitant bargain made by the master of a ship with the master of another ship in sore distress will not hold in court. Nor will an unsuccessful attempt at salvage form the basis for a claim. The salvage must be complete, or it is not at all. It must be shown also that the peril was actual, and that the assistance was given in good faith.

In England salvage may be claimed for saving vessels only on the high seas or in tide water. In America salvage extends to harbors, to the lakes, and to the rivers upon which interstate commerce is carried on. In England claims for salvage are heard by the Admiralty division of the High Court of Justice. In America the United States District Court sits as an admiralty court. The common ground upon which claims for salvage may

be based is the saving of a ship imperilled by the sea, by fire, by rocks, by crippled machinery or equipment, by pirates, enemies, or the sickness or death of the crew or master. The amount is determined by the danger incurred, by the peril of the distressed ship, and by the value of the ship and cargo. While the salvage is usually paid by the underwriters, it is always to the interest of masters to refrain from calling for assistance so long as possible. The salvage is paid to the owners of the vessel that does the saving. It is as a general thing about one-third of the value of the vessel and cargo in the case of a sailing vessel, and between one-third and onehalf in the case of a steam vessel. Of this sum the master of the salvor gets a considerable share. His proportion is usually twice that of the mate, and the mate gets twice what each seaman gets. Those seamen who risk their lives in the lifeboats or who are sent aboard to manage the wrecked or crippled vessel, get twice as much as those who stay behind in the rescuing ship.

It is a curious fact that the law does not permit any salvage for saving life. This is because under the insurance contracts a vessel is not held to have gone out of her course when she goes out of it to save life, while, if she goes to save property, her insurance is no longer in force. Naval and other marine officers of the government cannot claim salvage when they are within the lines of their duty. There are especial rules in cases of saving derelicts; a derelict being regarded as still the property of her owners, although her crew has abandoned her and no effort is making to recover her.

Often a ship fortunate enough to save an imperilled or helpless vessel will make more than she would on two or three voyages. If she but renders assistance she gets far more than the mere payment for her time and trouble. But when one ship hails another for slight assistance there is usually a bargain made then and there, and this bargain bars all claims for salvage. When a ship has a clear right to salvage, the owners or underwriters of the saved ship do not make any great contest of the claim. They merely try to bring out the exact extent of the peril and prevent the assessment of an exorbitant sum.

The admiralty courts always have a number of claims for salvage under consideration. While some of these claims amount to only a few hundreds or a few thousands of dollars, a few result in awards of from $25,000 to $150,000.

HYDROGRAPHY.

There are about 200 rocks dangerous to navigation discovered every year. The British Admiralty keeps a dozen vessels employed in hydrographical surveying in various parts of the world. Discoveries made by other vessels are also reported to the British Admiralty. The Coast-Survey is a most delicate and important branch of government service in America, to which the sailor looks for knowledge of shifting bottoms, dangerous shoals, isolated rocks and other perils to navigation. It furnishes accurate maps of the whole coast; points out the positions for lighthouses, beacons and other signals; determines the character and cause of currents of the ocean along our shores; develops the laws of the tides; ascertains the prevailing courses of the winds; notes the changes which take place near harbor entrances; investigates the character of the bottom of the sea, and in fact, does anything that may contribute to a full and accurate knowledge of our coast and adjacent waters.

Storm warnings were first issued in Holland in 1860. Daily weather charts were first issued in 1872.

DERELICTS.

For the past several years the Hydrographic Office of the Navy Department has been of great service to mariners by collecting information regarding derelicts, their movements, changes in character or position, by the action of the elements or other causes, and publishing the same on the first of each month in the form of a pilot chart, which also contains a large amount of other information of the greatest value to the navigator. Subsidiary to the work of the Hydrographic Office in locating dangerous wrecks and reporting the movements of derelicts, have been the

operations of the naval vessels to which has been assigned the work of blowing up such obstructions to commerce as may be considered of a specially dangerous character. Most derelicts are lumber-laden and come from southern ports of the United States. The Gulf Stream flowing strongly in a north-northeasterly direction, they are apt to be carried along with it until they strike the Labrador current flowing south, and then their course is reversed.

The American schooner W. L. White, abandoned off Cape Hatteras in the blizzard of March 13, 1888, is a case in point. She floated north with the Gulf Stream until she got into the Labrador current off the Grand Banks in the following May. Here she remained floating to and fro in the very track of many ocean steamers during the entire summer of 1888 and until October 30, when she took an easterly and then northeasterly course, and finally went ashore on the Hebrides, Jan. 25, 1889. During the cruise of this derelict, covering ten months and ten days, she must have covered a distance of more than six thousand miles.

About 70 per cent. of the transocean international commerce of the globe is carried on within a belt of water about 600 miles in width, between Europe and North America. This great lane of commerce embraces only about two per cent. of the entire ocean surface of the world. It is in this comparatively small part of the ocean that many of the derelicts are reported.

There appears to be an annual total loss of 2,172 vessels and about 12,000 lives in the entire ocean commerce of the world. The annual value of the ships and cargoes thus lost is estimated to be about $100,000,000. The hydographic chart issued Feb. 20, 1892, for instance, shows the places where 956 vessels were wrecked on the Atlantic coast of North America. It also shows the positions of 332 vessels abandoned on the high seas, of which 139 were so frequently reported that their drift tracks are marked on the chart. Besides, there were 625 derelicts reported whose tracks were not ascertained. This makes a total of 957 during a period of five years, from 1887 to 1891 inclusive, an average of 16 each month.

During the same period there occurred 38 collisions with derelicts, or an average of eight every year. The average time a derelict remains afloat is found to be about 30 days.

The American schooner Wyer G. Sargent was dismasted and abandoned at sea, March 31, 1891, in latitude, 34° 42', longitude, 74° 40'. With a cargo of $20,000 worth of mahogany below decks she drifted on the Atlantic for six years, and in the first 21 months traveled more than 5,000 miles, until Oct. 12, 1892, when she got into the Sargasso Sea, remaining there until carried out of its influence by unusually fierce easterly gales in the winter of 1896-1897. She twice crossed the Gulf Stream, was sighted 27 times, and each time her appearance was much the same as when her crew left her. Her decks were awash, her bow well out of water. After battling with storms for six years, shattered and covered with barnacles, she drifted ashore on the uninhabited island of Conception, one of the most dangerous of the Bahamas. Hers was the most remarkable career of any derelict ever known, as she attracted the attention of shipping men all over the world and her erratic courses about the Atlantic were for months most accurately plotted on the pilot charts.

In January, 1892, the bark Hutchins Brothers, of Halifax, was sighted west of the Bermudas with all sails set and not a soul aboard.

A large railway transfer barge drifted over 4,000 miles from a point on the California coast to a coral reef off the Marshall group.

In 1876, the British ship Ada Iredale, having her cargo of coal on fire, was abandoned at sea in the South Pacific 1,900 miles east of the Marquesas Islands. She continued to burn and float until she had worked her way to the vicinity of the Society Islands, 2,423 miles away, where, on June 9, 1877, she was sighted and towed into port, where she continued to burn until May of the next year, nearly two years after she was abandoned. The fire at last burnt out, she was towed to San Francisco, repaired, rechristened the Annie Johnson, and placed in the Pacific China trade, where she is now engaged.

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