But beyond all these considerations, there is one that cannot, when referring to the subject of railway accidents, be overlooked, or passed by without comment—their cost. In 1865, no less than £333,533 were paid in compensation by railway companies, in consequence of railway accidents. If to this amount be added £200,000, for destruction of rolling stock and road, the heavy expense involved in their re-establishment or replacement, the enormous law costs to which the companies are subjected in settling claims or in defending actions, mounts up the total amount of actual expenditure, owing to these fearful occurrences, to upwards of half-a-million sterling, or nearly 1¼ per cent. on the total capital expended on railways. To this amount might also be added loss of receipts which always occur to a railway immediately after the occurrence of a serious accident. From the one cause of cost, without seeking to find any other reasons, railway companies have good reasons to dread railway accidents. Yet considering the immense amount of persons carried, the numbers killed or wounded is small as compared with the numbers of those who are sufferers from accidents to which we are all liable all over the kingdom. Taking the metropolis only, there were 375 persons killed in the year 1862, of whom 171 came to sudden death within city limits, the remainder being the casualties of this description for all the other parts of London.[66] If we refer to the Wreck Register of the Board of Trade, for 1866, we will see that, whilst the number of wrecks and casualties to ships[67] from all causes, on or near the coasts of the United Kingdom was 1,860 (just 251 more than the average of shipwrecks for the last five years, and 322 more than the average for ten years), the number of the lives lost was 896.[68] It is estimated that 500,000 persons navigate the ships both foreign going and coasting, in which these lives were lost. Their number would have, beyond all doubt, been greatly added to, but for noble efforts that have been established, as well as increased within very recent years, for saving life from shipwreck. During the last year and the first-half of 1867, no less than 1,600 lives have been saved by means of the 153 boats of the National Life Boat Association. A large number of lives has also been saved by the rocket apparatus which is furnished to the Coast Guard by the Board of Trade, out of the Mercantile Marine Fund. In 1864 there was one life lost for every 109,715 tons of coal raised in British collieries. In that proportion there would have been 903 persons killed in collieries in 1866.