Steam, no doubt, has much to answer for in having increased, rather than diminished the apparent terrors of bad weather at sea; causing writers who draw their experiences of storms from the decks of long narrow ships driven six or seven knots in the teeth of a gale, to form exaggerated ideas of tempests, and the behaviour of well handled sailing craft in the same weathers. A steamer plunges into a head-sea in a blundering sort of way, wallowing from side to side as she does so, and shipping water to port or starboard in the most uncertain manner. The power that drives the great hull against the rolling masses of water seems to have no sympathy with either the ship or the waves; and drenched from stem to stern, the vessel reels and staggers on her way, kept only to her work by careful use of helm. Now, the sailing vessel meets a head-sea, when lying-to under easy canvas, as though she knew just what to do with it. She is at one, so to speak, with the whole matter. Her long tapering spars act pendulum-like, checking all sudden or jerky rolling; and as long as a stitch of canvas can be set she meets the waves in a give-and-take way reminding one of the "soft answer that turneth away wrath." Again, modern describers of sea-storms seem to forget, that on board well found ships, things are not merely fitted for use in fair weather, but to bear the strain of bad weathers; and that loss of canvas and spars at sea was, and is looked upon as a matter of negligence; so much so that in the navy most of these losses had to be made good by the officer in command. And one seldom heard in old sea stories of cordage left to rattle and shriek, or sails to bang about and explode like cannon in the hands of real seamen. In fact, after once the canvas was reduced to its lowest, a head gale in a sailing vessel was less noisy than the same wind on shore among trees or houses; while down below the noise of the weather was not to be compared with the rattle and rumble of a gale inside a house. In the case of a sudden squall striking a ship after a spell of fine weather, or just after leaving port, no doubt a few loose things might fetch away, and give young sailors or passengers the notion that every thing was going topsy-turvy; but after a short spell of really hard weather, things soon get into place at sea, and, so far as officers and crew are concerned, the routine of sea life goes on as monotonously as in more moderate weather.