Cornish Characters and Strange Events. Baring-Gould Sabine

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the Russian ambassador, the then Czar sent him a diamond ring, in consideration of the great advantage his apparatus had proved in shipwrecks on the Baltic and the Black Sea. Even this he was constrained to pledge, that he might devote the money to his darling project.

      With these acknowledgments of his services he had to rest contented; but ever the news of lives having been saved through his invention was a solace to an even and contented mind.

      Henry Trengrouse died at Helston on February 19th, 1854.

      As he lay on his death-bed with his face to the wall, he turned about, and with one of his bright, hopeful smiles said to his son, "If you live to be as old as I am, you will find my rocket apparatus all along our shores." They were his last words; in a few minutes he had passed away.

      The rocket apparatus is along the shores at 300 stations, but not, as he had hoped, on board the vessels. He had despaired of obtaining that, yet that is what he aimed at principally.

      In April, 1905, owing to the loss of the Kyber on the Land's End coast, questions were asked in the House of Commons relative to wireless telegraphy between the lighthouses and the coast. On that occasion one of the most valuable suggestions was made by a shipping expert, who considered that the Board of Trade should make it compulsory that a light rocket apparatus should be carried by all vessels, so that, when in distress, if near the coast, the crew could send a rocket ashore. This marine engineer said: "On shore the rockets must be fired by practised men, such as coastguards, because they have to strike a small object; but on a vessel they have only to hit the land, and if people are about, the line will quickly be seized and made fast. At present, too, horses and wagons have to be used, and sometimes it is difficult to find a road leading down to the spot from which help must be rendered. Probably for twenty pounds an appliance could be kept on board a vessel which would send a line ashore in less time and with more certainty than at present. When a vessel is being blown ashore, I have seen rockets fired from the land return like a boomerang to the cliff on account of the strength of the gale. In my judgment, mariners should assist in their own salvation."

      On this Mr. H. Trengrouse, grandson of the inventor, wrote to the Cornishman, 24th April, 1905: —

      "Your suggestion in the Cornishman of the 15th instant … that all vessels should be compelled by the Board of Trade to carry this apparatus, is very practical, and should, and I trust may, be soon adopted.

      "It may interest your readers to learn that the inventor, my grandfather, the late Mr. Henry Trengrouse, of Helston, urged this upon successive Governments without any encouragement whatever, and I on two occasions have also suggested it to the principals of the Marine Department of the Board of Trade, who have informed me of a strong opinion always entertained, that on the occasion of wreck, there would probably not be any one on board possessing sufficient knowledge of the use of the apparatus to render it of any value; which seems very strange indeed, and might be readily obviated by, at least, the captain and officers of vessels being instructed in its use – surely simple enough. My grandfather devoted much time to make it so; and the advantage of an appliance for use on board is so palpable, and the loss of life during many years by its absence so considerable, that it is extremely gratifying to observe a renewed and increasing interest in the subject, which I hope, Sir, as you state, being so important, may now be kept to the fore.

"I am, Sir,"Your obedient servant,"H. Trengrouse."

      That this admirable letter to the Cornishman should at the time produce no effect on the Board of Trade is what every one who has had any dealings with that Board would predicate.

      At length, however, some goading has roused that obstructive, inert body into inquiring into this matter. I read in the Daily Express of 27th January, 1908: "The question whether the carrying of rockets for projecting lifelines should be made compulsory on all British ships is being investigated by a special committee appointed by the Board of Trade. One witness before the committee said that he had seen fifty men drowned within sixty yards of the shore in a gale, and that all might have been saved had the vessel been equipped with line-throwing guns."

      So – after the lapse of eighty-six or seven years, and the loss of thousands of lives that might have been saved had not the Board of Trade been too inert to move in the matter – an inquiry has once more been instituted. Let us hope that after this inquiry the matter may not be allowed to fall again into neglect.

      That the rocket fired from the shore has been already the means of saving lives, the following report on it made to the Board of Trade, for the year ending 30th June, 1907, will testify: —

      "During the year ended as above, 268 lives were saved by means of the life-saving apparatus, that is to say, 127 more than the number saved by the same means during the previous year, and 67 more than the average for the previous ten years. The total number of lives saved by the life-saving apparatus since 1870 is 8924. This number does not include the large number of lives saved by means of ropes and other assistance from the shore."

      After the loss of the Berlin, belonging to the Great Eastern Company, in 1907, the attention of the Dutch Government was called to the advantage of having the rocket apparatus on board ship, and legal instructions were drafted, making it obligatory upon all vessels of over two hundred tons gross to carry rocket apparatus.

      Henry Trengrouse's noble life was a failure in so far as that it brought him no pecuniary results – covered him with disappointment, reduced him to poverty. He received, in all, for his life's work, and the sacrifice of fortune and the landed estate of his ancestors, £50 from Government, £31 10s. from the Society of Arts, and a diamond ring that in his time of need he was constrained to pawn, and which he was never able to redeem.

      Russell Lowell puts these lines into the mouth of Cromwell, in his Glance behind the Curtain: —

      My God, when I read o'er the bitter lives

      Of men whose eager hearts are quite too great

      To beat beneath the cramp'd mode of the day,

      And see them mocked at by the world they love,

      Haggling with prejudice for pennyworths

      Of that reform which this hard toil will make

      The common birthright of the age to come —

      When I see this, spite of my faith in God,

      I marvel how their hearts bear up so long;

      Nor could they, but for this same prophecy,

      This inward feeling of the glorious end.

      Henry Trengrouse married Mary, daughter of Samuel and Mary Jenken, 19th November, 1795. She was born at S. Erth, 9th September, 1772, and died at Helston, 27th March, 1863. By her he had one son only who reached manhood, Nicholas Trevenen Trengrouse, who died at the age of seventy-four; and one daughter, Jane, who married Thomas Rogers, solicitor, of Helston; Emma, who married a Mr. Matthews; and two, Mary and Anne, who died unmarried, the first at the age of eighty, the latter at that of ninety-four.

      To Mr. Henry Trengrouse, the son of Mr. Nicholas T. Trengrouse, I am indebted for much information relative to his grandfather, as also to a lecture, never published, delivered in 1894 by the Rev. James Ninnis, who says in a letter to Mr. H. Trengrouse, junior: "Most of the detail I have taken from notes of my father, dated 1878; he got them from conversation with your respected father."

      Mr. J. Ninnis' grandfather had stood on the beach by the side of Henry Trengrouse, watching the wreck of the Anson.

      A portrait of the inventor, by Opie the younger, is in the possession of the family at Helston, as is also the picture of the wreck of the Anson sketched at the time by Mr. Trengrouse. СКАЧАТЬ