'It is said by those who have visited the scene of the calamity that never was destruction more complete. The ironwork of the vessel is in mere shreds; the woodwork is in chips. The coast and the fields above the cliffs are strewn with fragments of the cargo and of the bedding and clothing. In the words of one of our reports, "A more complete annihilation of a noble vessel never occurred on our coast." Worse still, the rocks are covered with corpses of men and women frightfully mutilated, and strewn with the sovereigns which the poor creatures had gone so far to seek, and which were now torn from them in so pitiful a way. Of course, as is usual in all such cases, the reasons given for the occurrence of the calamity are various. In one account we see it attributed to the order given before midnight to veer out on the starboard cable. This, as it is said, brought too much strain upon the port cable, which parted, and then the other parted also, and then the ship drifted ashore. Others tell us that if the screw had not been fouled by the drift rigging and spars, the "Royal Charter" might have been saved. These, however, could have been but secondary and minor causes. The origin of the calamity seems to have been that in a wild night, with a gale blowing that soon became a hurricane, the ship was brought up dangerously near a lee shore. Let it be remembered, however, that Captain Taylor was the last man seen alive on board.' The _Morning Herald_, after chronicling the disaster, concludes with this valuable paragraph:-- 'This greatest and most terrible of the results of the late hurricane--for it cannot be otherwise described--will argue strongly either on behalf of those who demand ports of departure less channel-bound than Liverpool, or for those who urge the great necessity for a national system of providing life-boats which shall give, even in such wild bays as this where the "Royal Charter" went to pieces, a chance to some of the passengers of ill-fated ships that may be driven into them in such a storm as that of Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. Unfortunately the outcry on these subjects rises only while the mind of the public is resting on such a disaster as that which has just befallen the "Royal Charter," or at a time when the whole country is deploring such a series of wrecks as those which have strewn our coasts within the last three days. The life-boat question should certainly not be left to private benevolence, or to the efforts of companies. Governments have gone too far in their neglect of such subjects or their refusal to interfere, and we are certain that there is no other mode of using the public money which would meet with more hearty popular assent than that which would devote it to the provision of life-boats and harbours of refuge.' The colony may study these words with equal advantage to ourselves.