The list of calamities from ice is a long one. It was only a few years ago that the Arizona, when going full speed, crashed into a berg and stove in her bows. From her stem to a point about thirty feet aft nothing remained of her but a tangle of shapeless iron, and that she did not sink immediately was due to the smoothness of the sea and the strength of her forward bulkhead, which withstood the pressure of the water and enabled her to reach St. Johns, Newfoundland. In the records of the Hydrographic Office it appears that, from 1882 to 1890, thirty-six steamers were more or less injured by ice in the North Atlantic, though some of these were freighting and coastwise vessels, and not of the class to which this article particularly refers; and the commonest explanation offered of the fate of the missing ships is collision with ice in fog or in the darkness of night. * * * * * Having come to this point, the reader is probably of the opinion that the heading of this chapter is a mistake, but the reverse of the picture has yet to be shown. Notwithstanding all the peril from fog and ice, and from the fury of cyclones and hurricanes, the steamers of the transatlantic lines are so staunchly built and so capably handled, that a man is less likely to meet with accidents on board one of them than he would be in walking the streets of a crowded city. Never before have so many passengers been carried as are carried now. The ships that were regarded as leviathans fifteen or sixteen years ago are as yachts compared with more recent additions to the various fleets. Scarcely more than ten years have elapsed since sixteen knots was the maximum speed; now it is twenty knots, with the certainty of an almost immediate increase to twenty-one or twenty-two knots. The tonnage has been increased within the same period from a maximum of five thousand to ten thousand five hundred, and while ten years ago two hundred cabin passengers were as many as any steamer could accommodate with a reasonable degree of comfort on one voyage, it is not uncommon now to find over five hundred as the complement of one steamer. When steamers of sixteen and seventeen knots were built, it was said that they were too large and too fast, and that they would surely come to grief, but experience has proved them to be as safe as any. In fact, those who are best qualified to know, declare that the augmentation of speed promotes safety.