Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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The civilised man’s fear is founded, it must be admitted, on a reasonable knowledge of the ocean, so much his friend and yet so often his foe. Man is not independent of his fellow-man in distant countries, nor is it desirable that he should be. No land produces all the necessaries, and the luxuries which have begun to be considered necessaries, sufficient for itself. Transportation by land is often impracticable, or too costly, and the ocean thus becomes the great highway of nations. Vessel after vessel, fleet after fleet, arrive safely and speedily. But as there is danger for man lurking everywhere on land, so also is there on the sea. The world’s wreck-chart for one year must, as we shall see hereafter, be something appalling. That for the British Empire alone in one year has often exceeded 1,000 vessels, great and small! Averaging three years, we find that there was an annual loss during that period of 1,095 vessels and 1,952 lives.4 Nor are the ravages of ocean confined to the engulfment of vessels, from rotten “coffin-ships” to splendid ironclads. The coasts often bear witness of her fury.