American three-masted schooner actually came within half a mile of them. The shipwrecked men could see what was passing on her deck-the man at the wheel, and the hands going to and fro; but they failed to attract her attention, and she too passed on her course.

Tuesday night came and went without any vessel coming in sight; but about four o'clock on Wednesday morning a small schooner was seen bearing down on them from the northward. They hailed her, and she rounded to, as though she were waiting for them to come on board; but they had no means of steering their raft, and they gradually drifted away to leeward.

The schooner lay to for about ten minutes, and then went off. Presently they saw her lights again as though she were about to return; but this time she did not come so near as before, and when the day had fully dawned she was not to be seen at all. In about half an hour, however, to their great joy, she hove in sight again, and this time bore down close to them. When she was about two hundred yards off she hove to, and the men left their raft and swam to her, when they were taken on board, and were most kindly treated by her crew. She proved to be a small Dutch schooner, the Wilhelm Benklezoons, from Rotterdam for Valencia, for fruit. The men were taken to Spain, and from thence found their way back to England.

One numerous class of cargo steamers is that of the screw colliers, and wretched vessels some of them are, whilst, however, a very large number are fine, well-built, and well-found steamships. Forty years ago nearly the whole of the coal brought from the north of England to London was brought in the then regulation "Geordie," or coal-brig. Every ebb tide saw any amount of these craft, light, in ballast, drifting down the reaches of the Thames on their way north for a fresh cargo.

Scientific navigation was not the strong point of the Geordie skippers, but somehow or other they usually managed to blunder along up to Sunderland, or to Hartlepool, and to get back again to the Thames with their two or three hundred tons of coal-that is to say, if the weather were fairly propitious; if it were not, they were likely to be heard of on the Long Sand, or the Gunfleet.

There is a well-known sailor's yarn of a Geordie coming out of the Thames, going north in ballast. An autumn evening, just getting dusk, hazy, light breeze from the westward, a light-ship looms up on the starboard bow. "Lightship ahoy! What light is that?" "The Mouse." Skipper continues his course. As the dawn is just beginning to break skipper judges he must be well up for Lowestoft, but sights a lightship that he doesn't remember. "Lightship, ahoy! "Lightship, ahoy! What light is that?" "The Mouse." "What the are you doing up here?" The old Geordie had just been cruising around.

About forty years ago the first screw collier appeared in the London river. She had come round from the Tyne with three hundred tons of coal on board, and was called the Q.E.D. She was what would be known now as an auxiliary screw, being fully rigged as a barque, and sailing when there was a fair wind, but steaming with the wind ahead. Her mizen-mast was an iron tube, and served as a funnel, so that when under steam the smoke might be seen issuing from about her mizen crosstrees. In 1870, the first screw collier of the present type came up the Thames. This was the King Coal, an iron vessel, built on the Tyne, and she had cost, when ready for sea, £15,000. She was rather a handsome vessel, with a straight bow; she had three masts, being square-rigged on the foremast; her funnel, which was between the fore and main masts, having a white band with a black diamond. She carried 900 tons of coal as cargo, and had bunker-space for 100 tons more, and she was fitted with water-ballast tanks, enabling her to make the return passage with as little delay as possible. Against head winds, with a full cargo of coal, her speed was eight and a half knots an hour; when going back light, in fair weather, nine and a half to ten knots. Her engines were of 90 horse-power, nominal, working up to 600 horse-power, and the voyage from Newcastle to London and back usually occupied from six to eight days.

Hoisting sails, lifting anchor, and other heavy work was done by steam-winches. She had an excellent cabin on deck for the captain, with cabins for the chief mate and the steward; her crew consisted of seventeen persons, all told, accommodated in a roomy, well-ventilated forecastle on a level with the main