SIRE,
From Your Majesty's exalted station as Sovereign of the greatestmaritime power on earth, and from the ardent zeal with which You havegraciously extended Your Royal patronage to every measure which couldpromote the welfare and the glory of the British Navy, I have presumed,with the utmost deference, to dedicate the following pages to Your Majesty.
With the most dutiful respect, I have the honour to subscribe myself,
Sire,
Your Majesty's
Most devoted subject and servant,
WILLIAM HILLARY.
The few pages of which the present edition is composed, were principallywritten under the circumstances there stated, which had forcibly calledmy attention to the fatal effects of those ever-recurring tempests,which scatter devastation and misery round our coasts, where the veterancommander and his hardy crew, with their helpless passengers of everyage and station in life, are left wretchedly to perish from the want ofthat succour which it has become[Pg 2] my object earnestly to solicit forthese destitute victims of the storm.
Another winter has scarcely yet commenced, and our coasts are spreadover with the shattered fragments of more than two hundred vessels,which, in one fatal tempest, have been stranded on the British shores,attended with an appalling havoc of human life, beyond all present meansto ascertain its extent, besides the loss of property to an enormousamount. And shall these fearful warnings also be without avail? Shall westill close our eyes on conviction, until further catastrophes wringfrom us those reluctant efforts, which ought to spring spontaneouslyfrom a benevolent people? With the most ample means for the rescue ofthousands of human beings from a watery grave, shall we still leave themto their fate? Shall we hear unmoved of this widely-spread destruction,and not each contribute to those exertions, to which the commoncharities of human nature, and the certainty of the direful evils wemight avert, and the sufferings we[Pg 3] might assuage, ought to incite us tolend our utmost aid?
The conflicting fury of the elements, the darkness of night, thedisasters of the sea, and the dangers of the adjacent shores, but toofrequently combine to place the unhappy mariner beyond the power ofhuman relief. But if all cannot be rescued, must all therefore be leftto perish? If every effort cannot be attended with success, must not anyattempt be made to mitigate these terrible calamities, which bring homethe evil to our very doors, and force conviction on us by theirdesolating effects, and by the destruction of hundreds of ourcountrymen, whose wretched remains perpetually strew our shores?—Whilstwe pause, they continue to perish; whilst we pro