themselves have too often insisted on exercising functions and dictating in matters which only may be determined with propriety and safety by builders or by competent naval architects. The amount of thorough supervision to which a vessel is subjected while under construction, renders the fear of unseaworthiness, from either defective construction or equipment, the least reasonable of all the fears with which ocean navigation is regarded. It is in later circumstances, and concerning matters of a more extraneous character, that the most justifiable fears may be entertained regarding a vessel’s safety. Overloading, improper stowage, bad management, under-manning, insufficient repair, besides the numerous inevitable and unforeseen circumstances incidental to sea-voyaging, may be instanced as the causes to which the greatest losses are attributable.[4] Few instances of loss from structural defects are adduceable, and even in these, causes of a more or less extraneous character are associated with the loss. On the other hand, instances could be multiplied where vessels sustaining the casualties which rough weather or rank carelessness make always imminent have come out of the ordeal with credit to the constructors. One notable case may be instanced. The _Arizona_, of the Guion Line, some time after being put on the Atlantic service, while steaming at a speed of 14 knots, and almost in mid-Atlantic, ran into an iceberg of gigantic dimensions, and notwithstanding that the force of the concussion smashed her bows for a length of 20 feet into an unrecognisable mass, she kept afloat, and reached a port of safety. Where, as has already been indicated, there is such close oversight and thorough supervision—where, indeed, the real interests of every party honestly concerned lie so clearly in the high qualities of construction—nothing short of such results as the foregoing should be expected. The insurance companies, on whom the burden (monetary at least) of loss at sea ultimately falls, see it their interest to know that those registration societies, on whom they rely for guarantee as to a vessel’s structural and general efficiency, are themselves efficient and trustworthy authorities. These societies, known as Lloyd’s, Liverpool Underwriters, and Bureau Veritas, Registries, in spite of the dread as to business rivalry affecting injuriously their standards of classification, have still a high criterion, and enjoy the confidence of insurance societies and shipowners alike.