During these enforced absences upon an ocean voyage, great events frequently happened of which passengers, officers and crews were necessarily ignorant of. At the [Shut Out of the World.] termination of a long or short voyage, the first news could only be obtained from the pilot-boat which met the approaching vessel far out at sea. War might be on the eve of declaration as the vessel left port, battles might be fought, the enemy might be vanquished and even peace declared and a knowledge of all these events would only reach the tardy mariner upon the arrival of the vessel at her port of destination. Such a condition of affairs, often the cause of the deepest anxieties on the part of ocean travelers, might answer well enough for the days of the Crusaders, when kings of Great Britain went to Palestine to battle for the Cross, and never again heard from home in three or four years' time. When Napoleon, that meteor of the nineteenth century, left the shores of la belle France for the rocky desolation of St. Helena, it was over a year before he received any news from Paris. The same conditions ruled in 1899. Steam had rendered ocean voyages shorter and more punctual. But the main difficulty still existed. Passengers on our ocean-liners during a voyage knew as little of occurrences at home as those who traveled in the days of the Vikings and Crusaders. In this respect (as in many others), the world in 1899 was no better off than in the days when the Roman legions landed on the shores of Britain. The nineteenth century and the centuries before Christ were upon equal footing in this respect. Many splendidly equipped steamships, with colors flying and bands playing left port in the old days of sails and steam, with multitudes waving their adieux and heartily wishing them God-speed and were never again heard from. No communication was possible in those days between land and vessels at sea. Sometimes they were [Into the Jaws of Death.] doomed in the cold embrace of an iceberg; an occasional collision sent hundreds of souls to their final account; fire, always dreaded on the ocean, caused many to suffer the horrors of thirst and starvation; the ocean claimed its victims in many dreadful forms and no tidings ever reached home of the fate of loved ones, because communication between ship and shore in the "good old days" of 1899, was impossible. This supreme difficulty had not yet been overcome in 1899, and the defect was universally regarded as being a most deplorable one. The only communication ever maintained between vessels in mid-ocean and the main shore in the nineteenth century was done by cable-ships, while actually engaged in laying an ocean cable. The Great Eastern was the first steamship to lay claim to this distinction, when in 1867, her officers fished up and brought to the surface the broken Atlantic cable and the great news was flashed from ship to shore.