LIFE-SAVING SERVICE.

The necessities of civilization have developed in this country a programme for the aid and protection of navigation, in which one place is occupied by the Engineer Corps of the Army, charged with the labors of the lake survey and of river and harbor improvements; another by the United States Coast Survey, which furnishes the amplest possible sailing directions and guides, based upon comprehensive and diversified scientific studies of our shores and waters; a third by the Light-House Establishment, guarding all our coast approaches and principal rivers with its elaborate chains of night and day beacons for the guidance of mariners; a fourth by the Storm-Signal Service of the Army, whose semaphores give timely notice to seamen of the probable or actual approach of tempests; and the fifth by the Life-Saving Service, which complements the functions of the others by providing efficient means for rescuing life, and, secondarily, property, imperiled on our strands by marine disaster.

The growth of the Life-Saving Service, like that of the other members of the quintuple activity with which it is co-ordinate, has been slow, considering the demand for such ministration, necessitated by the distinctively maritime character early assumed by the nation. The organization appears to have obscurely resulted from the institution of the Massachusetts Humane Society. This noble benefaction, which was first associated in 1786 and incorporated in 1791, erected in 1789 huts on the coast of Massachusetts for the shelter of shipwrecked persons, and in 1807 put up at Cohasset the earliest, life-boat station, following it subsequently with others, which were all supplied with boats, rafts, mortars, and other apparatus for rescuing life, and were served by volunteer crews, paid upon each occasion of service at shipwrecks, and honored for signal conduct with medals and other tokens of appreciation. But notwithstanding its efforts, the efforts of similar enterprises at different points along the Atlantic seaboard, and the local endeavors of individuals in numerous shore communities, the annual loss of life by shipwreck on our coast, probably on account of the want of adequate means for rescue, and the insufficient and defective organizations of the institutions for that purpose, was, and long continued to be, frightful. Its enormity was notoriously such that in the debate preceding the action of Congress in 1854, Mr. Skelton, of New Jersey, and Mr. Chandler,

of Pennsylvania, repeatedly asserted, perhaps with some exaggeration, but certainly without contradiction, that the loss of life on the coast of Long Island and New Jersey alone amounted to more than one thousand persons per annum, and it is this mass of annual calamity that has given the shores of Cape Cod, New Jersey, and Cape Hatteras their sinister and ineffaceable tradition.

The black chapter of marine disaster continued until 1848, when some wreck of more than usual horror brought the Government to consider its duty in the premises. The undying honor of the initial measure for the mitigation of these calamities belongs to the Hon. William A. Newell, of New Jersey, whose powerful appeal in the House of Rep resentatives secured the passage of the act of August 14, 1848, appropriating $10,000 for providing surf-boats, rockets, carronades, &c., for aiding the shipwrecked on the coast of New Jersey between Sandy Hook and Little Egg Harbor. With this money eight stations were erected under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury.

In March, 1849, $10,000 was appropriated for the same locality and $10,000 for other parts of the coast of the United States, with which six stations were added to the Jersey coast, eight built on Long Island, and two at points in Long Island Sound.

No complete record exists of the efficacy that followed these expenditures. But it is known that in the winter of 1849-'50 264 persons were saved on the coast of Long Island by the life-saving appliances and 291 on the coast of New Jersey, together with much other unrecorded life, and also property; and this fact, and notably the striking service rendered in the great storm of January, 1850, by the Ottinger surf-car in bringing ashore 201 persons from the wreck of the emigrant ship Ayrshire encouraged Congress to appropriate $10,000 on September 28, 1850, and $10,000 on September 30, 1850, with one of which appropriations two more stations were added to the Long Island coast in 1851, and with the other life-boats were placed at different points on the coasts of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Texas. This was the first national extension of the wandering and uncertain movement which had begun for ameliorating the miseries and terrors of our seaboard.

In March, 1853, and August, 1854, there were appropriations of $10,000, $12,500, and $20,000, which were expended for life-boats on Lake Michigan and other points on the lakes and the Atlantic coast, and for the establishment of fourteen life-boat stations on the coast of New Jersey and eleven on the coast of Long Island.

At this time the degree of efficacy which had attended these measures began to slacken through the fatal incoherence of organization which had accompanied them. There were now on the Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf, and Lake coasts eighty-two life-boats without stations, besides those at the stations on the Long Island and New Jersey coast; and a few of them, which had been placed in charge of Government officials,

were in good condition, but the larger part had been entrusted to corporations, ephemeral benevolent societies or private citizens, and, despite their proved usefulness, had been let go to ruin. In the absence of any paramount directing mind, the necessary transfer of stations to points at which the alterations of the coast had formed new snares for mariners had not been made; and the stations, through repeated depredation and constant neglect, had dwindled in efficiency. The terrible thickening of disasters at this time, and the frequent spectacle of wrecks breaking up within sight of shore, amidst screams and supplications for assistance, when useless boats and apparatus made help impossible, indicated the radical fault which only the later creation of an organized service repaired.

A dreadful shipwreck on the New Jersey coast, involving the loss of three hundred lives, inspired the passage of the act of December 14, 1854, which authorized superintendents for the coasts of Long Island and New Jersey, and keepers for each of the stations. Although the service remained inchoate and ineffective, a corresponding improvement followed this measure, which was increased by the additional step, taken in 1870, of employing six surfmen at each alternate station on the coast of New Jersey during three months of the winter. These, however, were still only surface remedies, and renewed disasters in the winter of 1870-'71 caused the Treasury Department to make vigorous representations upon the subject to Congress already roused by the frequency and horror of such calamities. These representations led to a sudden and splendid development of the Life-Saving Service, which was effected by the appropriation in April, 1871, of $200,000. The act also authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to employ crews of experienced surfmen at such stations and for such periods as he might deem necessary and proper.

A report upon the condition of the stations was made, under orders, by Capt. John Faunce, of the Revenue Marine, and the exhibit determined the Hon. George S. Boutwell, then Secretary of the Treasury, to authorize a thorough reorganization of the service. Under his direction the work was at once begun. With the view of bringing the stations within an average distance of 3 miles of each other, twelve new station. houses were built on the coast of New Jersey and Long Island; the existing stations were either rebuilt or enlarged; all were furnished with the most approved and appropriate apparatus; a suitable quantity of beds and bedding for the use of the surfmen and those they rescued was provided for each; efficient officers and crews displaced the incapable; drill and exercise in the use of the boats and apparatus was instituted; the constant nocturnal patrol of the beach between the stations was established; a signal code was devised; the coast was dis tricted; elaborate regulations for the government of the stations were promulgated; examinations, periodical inspections, the keeping of accounts of expenditures, the journalizing of transactions and occurrences,

and the forwarding of returns and reports were exacted; in brief, the service became organic, and entered upon a career of usefulness unsurpassed by any similar service in the world, the proof and epitome of which are in the fact of the reduction of the former frightful annual loss of life to an average for the last five years of about three persons per annum. The details of the reorganization were entrusted to the Revenue Marine Division, then under the charge of Mr. S. I. Kimball, under whose administration the service has since remained.

By act of March, 1871, two additional stations were established on the coast of Rhode Island; by act of June, 1872, nine stations were erected upon Cape Cod; and by act of March, 1873, twenty-one more upon the coast from Maine to North Carolina. By the subsequent act of June 20, 1874, which provided more completely for the organization of the service than any of those preceding, fifty-one additional stations were authorized for points on the Atlantic, Lakes, and Pacific coasts; and the later act of March 3, 1875, added two more on the coast of Rhode Island and Long Island Sound, making one hundred and fifty-five in all. The important act of June 20, 1874, which authorized the establishment of the stations in a classified order, was the result of the report of a commission, designated by the Secretary of the Treasury on the 6th of March, 1873, composed of Mr. S. I. Kimball, chief of the Division of Revenue Marine, and Capts. John Faunce, and J. H. Merryman, officers of that service, the latter officer being the inspector of the Life-Saving Service, who made a thorough study of the coast and its requirements, involving personal inspection of the localities, upon which to base their recommendations.

The foregoing sketch of the historical development of the service necessarily preludes some account of its present organization. Under the system adopted, the sea and lake coasts of the United States are apportioned into eleven life-saving districts, each of them under the supervision of a local officer called a superintendent. Inspection is provided for by the detail of an inspector and two assistants, all officers of the Revenue Marine. Two officers of the Revenue Marine also act as superintendents of construction. Each station-house is under the charge of an experienced surfman, called a keeper, who commands a selected crew. The entire service, by virtue of its relation to commerce, is affiliated upon the Treasury Department, and is under the immediate government of one of its officers, as above shown.

Districts.-The districts are distinguished by numbers, from one upwards, beginning with the most northerly or easterly. The first district comprises the coasts of Maine and New Hampshire, from West Quoddy Head to Rye Beach; the second, the coast of Massachusetts, including the island of Nantucket; the third, the coasts of Rhode Island, Block Island, and Long Island, from Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island, to Coney Island, New York; the fourth, the coast of New Jersey, from Sandy Hook to Cape May; the fifth, the coasts of Delaware, Maryland,