Ships were lost during these dark voyages, and said to have had ‘no trace of a human body, or so much as a spar floating’. The majority of these losses were undoubtedly due to weather, which seems always to be the chief enemy of shipping at sea. As the storms grew more frequent and more violent, they increasingly led to the loss of ships. ‘The number of ships which have lost their crew on the coast of England is a subject of the most melancholy reflection.’ ‘In the course of about twelve months about 150 ships were driven ashore in Kent alone.’ ‘The number of persons cast away in this manner in the English Channel is daily increasing; and every ship that is wrecked in the Channel is a public calamity.’ When in 1726 a wreck occurred near the Lizard, there was no one living in St Mary’s parish. It was reported that when the lifeboat arrived it found the captain ‘lying dead upon the main-mast, with the helm in his hands’, a ‘miserable spectacle’. There was no light to guide the distressed mariners in their frail craft, and at night they became ‘perfectly helpless’. ‘This ship, which was laden with wood, and bound for Spain, came to an untimely end in sight of the most southern point of England.’ Many of the survivors were ‘killed with hunger, the weather increasing every day’. In November 1710 a gale came ‘from the northwest, and increasing to a dreadful violence, struck and drove in a prodigious number of vessels; as may be computed from the circumstance that all the pilots who reside on the coast have a large number of wrecks among their other memorials.’ An early storm in 1711 was so severe that ‘the most populous places could give no account of the number of people who were drowned’. On one day alone a hundred seamen drowned in the sea; and this was ‘a single day, in the spring of the year, and without a great tempest’. Such calamities repeated themselves. ‘The storms of 1714, 1717, and 1718 were terrible, and in those years many vessels went down, some by stress of weather and others by piracy. In particular one ship, sailing from Ireland, was almost wholly lost; a circumstance which might be almost overlooked, had not the particular circumstances of that event fixed themselves so deeply in the memory.’ Not all the vessels and lives lost were to England, but also to ‘Bourdeaux, Flanders, the Channel, the coast of Normandy, the coast of Holland, and even to the northern parts of the Mediterranean.’ Although, according to Samuel Baker, in 1719 ‘the sea was never more calm than in the beginning of that year, yet after the middle of it, to the middle of June, a great number of wrecks were daily seen, and the people in general were kept in expectation of several more’. The calamity in that year was not confined to a particular part of the country, for ‘the most southern, the eastern, and the western part of the kingdom was drowned.’ It is said that in those three months alone ‘two hundred ships perished with all the crews, the greater part of them within sight of the shore.’ In June and July of that year the winds began to be very violent, and it was observed that many ships were driven near the sands by the violence of the storm. A report prevailed that there would be a very great general loss; yet a particular ship or ships were never heard of. No year in the eighteenth century was so ‘unfruitful’ as 1686. Of the sixty-two ships ‘fathered’ at Deptford ‘in the year 1649, the greatest part were lost; as are now, in all appearance, to be the case for the next century.’ This was a time when ‘the most remote parts of the country are visited every year, and many ships are cast away on the coast of Kent, from the river of Thames to Plymouth.’ More and more often the only wreck that occurred was an occasional ship which ‘puts ashore from some accident unknown’ in the Channel; or a ship driven from her course by a storm, ‘cast by the violence of the tempest into some creek’ on the coast. In 1697 ‘the greatest part of our trading ships were lost, some at sea, some upon the coast of Scotland and Ireland.’ In 1699 the King lost ‘two large ships, with many men in them.’ From the west of England ships were more and more ‘tolerably frequent, in appearance; for the king of France’s proclamation to apprehend such sailors seemed to have some effect on this trade.’ In those three years, ‘there was scarcely a man came to Plymouth that escaped.’ Every vessel in port had been ‘lately taken up with great numbers of dead bodies cast over-board, with a general loss of men, and a great deal of money.’ On December 27 the people at Plymouth, who were alarmed at the increase of ships and seamen found in the roads, were ‘much disturbed in hearing of a great number of men who had just been committed to the gaol upon the breaking up of a new rebellion, and some ships which were lying at Leam with only two men and a boy on board, and with a third lad in the ship.’ In 1718 a terrible storm came from the south-west; it ‘came directly from the west coast of Africa. It fell with such violence as is beyond the power of nature. Some ships in various places were never heard of, nor was it known what had befallen them.’ On May 3, 1725, ‘between the time of ten and eleven o’clock, the wind increased to a gale, and fell suddenly with the greatest fury; and a great tempest and confusion of wind ensued, in which nothing could be distinguished for a moment, but the wind roaring, and a rain and lightning which continued the whole night.’ On August 14 the same year, in ‘a violent wind and rain from the south-west, five ships were totally lost, and eleven were driven away from Plymouth.’ In these three years two hundred and sixty-five ships had put into the Downs, but three hundred and twenty-four of them had got safe to the westwards; all the remainder were lost, or were about to have been lost, in these terrible months of September and October. We have seen something of the conditions in Newfoundland. In 1821 an American ship ‘fell in with a shoal of rocks and went to pieces, and all the crew, who were twenty-eight in number, perished. A great number of fish lay near the wreck, and on the wreck there were two men alive, who remained from the wreck of 1809, and they had saved themselves by clinging to a piece of floating wreck, but were lost. The wrecks which now occur from this cause are by far the greatest, and the loss of life is immense. The greater part of those ships which run upon the shoals in the West Indies, or the coast of Barbadoes, are lost. They seldom carry a crew of many hands, and seldom more than four. It often happens that they make no signals at all.’ This is a great calamity to them as well as to the crews who lose their lives. In 1826, ‘it is more than probable that there will be a loss of many hundred of men in the herring fishery; a circumstance which is owing entirely to the change in the circumstances of the British fishermen. A great number of them have recently settled on the Banks of Newfoundland; and a great number of them are from the coast of England, where they often lived in a state of almost nakedness. A great number of the houses for fish are erected near the Newfoundland Banks, which are often covered by ice, as at this time. All the fishermen now sail to the Banks, where they remain a very short time, and to make the best profit, that any can make, they are unwilling to return again, and they rarely stay there but one year. They seldom sail from the Banks till they see the fishery quite safe; and then they run for the islands. They therefore neglect the precautions which have been so common in former years. The old and experienced fisherman think, as they seldom go to the Banks, and return quickly after they have brought the fish on shore, that the dangers of the sea are now removed; but a man who goes on these occasions ought to be used to the sea.’ There is a whole chapter in which the writer describes the ‘great loss of life’ in a voyage in 1831. That year a vessel put into Plymouth with the loss of ‘sixty-two men, three of whom were seamen. The others were fishermen who had been employed in the British fishing-grounds at Labrador and the Banks of Newfoundland.’ Then there is a chapter entitled ‘The loss of the “Falcon”.’ ‘The great ship “Falcon” had long sailed from her moorings in the river Thames on a voyage of upwards of two thousand miles to India, and was now on her return home. The ship was of a very large size, and was supposed to carry more than a thousand souls.’ The captain and all the officers were lost, and, besides ‘the loss of lives which were in consequence of the violence of the weather, the ship was so much disabled that, upon arriving at the river in the river Thames, they had great difficulty in getting her into port. It was supposed that she had been in collision with another ship