Still more wonderful is the invention of wireless telegraphy, which has come to the ship as the greatest blessing and boon within recent years. With the general principles of its working the reader is, no doubt, already familiar, and the present volume need not enlarge upon them, but the accompanying illustration will be found interesting as showing the Marconi room with a telegraphist at work on a Cunarder. For a distance of 2,000 miles from Liverpool wireless connection can be maintained between the ship and the shore, whilst passing liners many miles apart are enabled to communicate with each other to their mutual benefit and safety. Whilst these pages are being printed a transatlantic wireless service has been instituted between Europe and America, and it is indisputable that the next naval war will be considerably influenced by the employment of wireless gear on board battleships, cruisers, scouts, and the bigger mosquito craft. Of the invaluable aid which already the wireless system has been to the steamship in peace we could give countless instances had we the space; but the following will suffice to show its utility within the last two or three years. On May 28th, 1907, the German liner _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_, whilst on her voyage was enveloped in a dense fog and passed, without sighting, close to another steamer sailing in the same direction. The German ship, however, heard the other’s sirens, and knowing that the Cunard _Caronia_ was on the same track, and might run some chance of collision with the unseen vessel, the German captain sent a wireless message to the _Caronia_, and two hours and a half later received a reply from the latter which showed that the third steamer was on the Cunarder’s course, and might have been a danger to her. [Illustration: THE MARCONI ROOM ON A CUNARD LINER. _From a Photograph. By permission of the Cunard Steamship Co._] A clear case of the avoidance of costly salvage was afforded in April, 1910, when the Allan liner _Carthaginian_, which had left Liverpool a week earlier for St. John’s, Newfoundland, was disabled at sea owing to the breaking of a piston-rod. She was able by means of her “wireless” to inform the same owners’ _Hesperian_ of her mishap, and the latter received the news when a hundred miles west of Malin Head, County Donegal. The _Hesperian_ thereupon went to her sister’s assistance, and took the ship, with her 800 emigrants on board, in tow for the Clyde. Still more interesting is the thrilling rescue which was obtained from the sinking liner _Kentucky_ by the _Alamo_, which took place in February, 1909. The following statement, taken from a daily newspaper of the time, needs no embellishing, and the simple facts speak once more for the triumphant victory which the new telegraphy has obtained over some of the terrors with which the sea is inevitably associated:--