The Crew were Saved [antikvár]

THE CREW WERE SAVED If you look at the British Isles on a map of Europe, your first thought is how very small they are. But they have one thing that is large, their coast. If you were to walk right round it you would travel 5,000 miles. If it were stretched out in a straight line it would go a fifth of the way round the world at the equator. It is a very busy coast. Ships come to it from all the ports of the world. It is a dangerous coast. When storms are blowing or when there is fog, a ship is in much greater danger near the land than when she is out at sea in deep water. Round the British Isles there are swift currents, hidden rocks, and many hidden banks of sand so near to the surface of the sea that a ship cannot sail over them, and it is only in the narrow channels of deeper water between them that she can safely go. Thousands of ships, coming into the ports of the British Isles, have been carried out of their course by the currents, have run on the rocks and sand banks, lost their way in the fogs, been driven ashore by storms, and there been broken to pieces; and in these wrecks tens of thousands of sailors have lost their lives. When one remembers how great is the trade of Great Britain and how all this trade must go across the seas, it is not surprising that she was the ' first country to have a life-boat service : that is, to have boats waiting on land ready to go out at once to the help of ships which, as they come near the shore, are in difficulty or danger. It was started in a way in which big things are often done in Britain.