on land where equal risks are run; but there are dangers on the waves, as well as on the hills, the roads, and even in the streets, which no foresight can anticipate, and no precaution can avert.

The principal danger of a coasting voyage, sailing alone, is that of being run down, especially on the thickly traversed English coast, and at night.

As for the important question concerning the “rule of the road” at sea, which is every now and then raised, discussed and then forgotten again after some collision on a crowded river in open day has frightened us into a proper desire to prevent such catastrophes, it appears to me that no rule whatever could possibly be laid down for even general obedience under such circumstances, without causing in its very observance more collisions than it would avert, unless the traffic in the river were to be virtually arrested.

On land the “rule of the road” is well enough

on a road, where vehicles are moving in one of two directions, but how would it do if it were to be insisted upon at the place where two streets cross?  Now the Thames and other populous rivers are at times as much blocked and crowded by the craft that sail and steam on the water as the crossing at Ludgate Hill is by vehicles at three o’clock, that is, considering fairly the relative sizes of the objects in motion, and the width of the path they must take, their means of stopping or steering, and, above all, the great additional forces on the water which cannot be arrested—wind and tide—moreover, at this London crossing the traffic has to be regulated by policemen, not by a rule for the drivers, but by an external arbitrary director.

The wonderful dexterity of the cabmen, carmen, and coachmen of London is less wonderful than that of the men who guide the barges, brigs, and steamers on the Thames, and it is perfectly amazing that huge masses weighing thousands of tons, and bristling with masts and spars, and rugged wheels projecting, should be every day led over miles of water in dense crowds, round crooked points, along narrow guts, and over hidden shoals while gusts from above, and whirling eddies below are all conspiring to confuse the clearest head, to baffle the strongest arm and to huddle up the whole mass into a general wreck.

Consider what would be the result in the Strand if no pedestrian could stop his progress within three yards, but by anchoring to a lamp-post, and even then swinging round with force.  Why, there would be scarcely a coal-heaver who would not be whitened by collision with some baker’s boy.  Ladies in full sail would be run down, and dandies would be sunk by the dozen.

The fact is, that vessels on the wide sea are like travellers on a broad plain and not on a road at all, and the two cases do not admit of being dealt with by the same rule, and it is not wonderful that there should be many collisions in the open sea while there are so few in the Thames, the water street of the world.  We may learn some lessons from land for safe traffic on water.  The cabman who “pulls up” is sure to signal first with his whip to the omnibus astern of him, and the coachman who means to cross to the “wrong side” never does so without a warning to those he is bearing down upon.  What is most wanted, then, on the open water, is some ready, sure, and costless signal, to say, “I am going that way” (right or left); for nearly all collisions at sea are caused by one ship not being able to know what the other is going to do. [50]

This is my thought on the matter after many thoughts and some experience: meantime while we have ate, and talked and thought, our yawl has slipped over six miles of sea, and we must rouse up from a reverie to scan the changing picture.

Glance at the barometer—note the time.  Trim the sails, and bear away to that pretty fleet of fishing boats bobbing up and down as they trail their nets, or the men gather in the glittering fish, and munch their rude breakfasts, tediously heated by smoky stoves, while they gaze on the white-sailed stranger, and mumble among themselves as to what in the world he can be.  The sun mounts and the breeze presses till we are at the bay of the Somme with its shifting sands, its incomprehensible currents, and its low and treacherous coast, buoyed and beaconed enough to puzzle you right into the shoals.  The yacht, with my friend S--- in her, bound for Paris, has just been wrecked on that bank near Cayeux—unpleasant news now—and there is St. Valery, from whence King William the Conqueror sailed with his fleet for England, as may be seen on the curious tapestry at Bayeux worked by his Queen’s

hands, and still almost as fresh as then.  I never saw a place appear so differently from sea and from land as this strange port, so I ran in just to reconnoitre, and spent some hours with chart, compass, lead-line, and Pilot-book, trying my best, to make out the currents, but all to no purpose except to conclude that a voyage along this coast in bad weather would be madness, unless with a man to help.

But nearly all this part of the French coast is awkward ground to be caught in, especially where there are shifting or sinking sands, for if the vessel touches these, the tide stream instantly sucks the sand from under one side, while it piles it up on the other, and thus the hull is gradually worked in with a ridge on such side, and cannot be slewed off, but is liable to be wrecked forthwith.  It was interesting to read here the account of this coast given by my Pilot-book, which had at last been dug out of its hiding-place.  The reader need not peruse this official statement, but to justify my remarks on the dangers it is given below in a note. [52]