SAILORS' HOMES.-We are glad to learn that Sailors' Homes generally appear to be most successful; that at Portsmouth especially so, as the patronage which it continually receives amply proves. It appears to be always full. We understand that Mr. Montague Gore, the late member for Barnstaple, author of an excellent pamphlet on the subject of those valuable institutions, Sailors' Homes, lately visited the Portsmouth Home, in company with Capt. W. H. Hall, and was much delighted with the arrangements made for the comfort of the seamen in the Home. It was pleasing to see the inmates of the Home, some of whom were shipwrecked seamen just landed from her Majesty's sloop Pilot, happy and comfortable, and to hear from the zealous and able superintendent, Capt. Johnston, the very successful working of the establishment, and the great benefit it has already been to thousands of our men of war seamen, particularly lately to the crew of H.M S. Britannia, Capt. Goldsmith. Upwards of 600 of the crew, while the ship was fitting out at Portsmouth, made it their home when on shore on leave. As a proof of the very high opinion that Admiral Deans Dundas has formed of the Portsmouth Sailors' Home, on the morning that the Britannia proceeded to sea for the Mediterranean, the gallant admiral forwarded through Capt. Hall, a donation of £5 to that establishment. METEOROLOGICAL REGISTER. Kept at Croom's Hill, Greenwich, by Mr. Rogerson, of the Royal Observatory, From the 21st of January, to the 20th of February, 1852. 1 Su. 2 M. 30-04 3 Tu. 30.05 4 W. 30.10 5 Th. 29.75 6 F. 29.68 7 8. 30.15 8 Su. 29.74 9 M. 29.15 10 Tu. 29.64 11 W. 30.10 12 Th. 30:00 13 F. 14 S. 15 Su. 16 M. 17 Tu. 29.78 29.88 52 54 50 55 30.00 51 53 30-08 38 47 29.96 44 48 37 49 29.72 54 51 47 55 29.85 45 45 44 48 30.15 36 45 33 47 29.56 48 52 42 54 29 32 43 43 39 44 29.84 34 41 29 43 30.11 33 39 30 40 N 29.90 30 38 25 39 SE SE 29.58 29.63 34 37 30 39 SE SE 30:05 30.13 36 41 33 42 SE SE 30.21 30.15 38 47 32 48 SW SW 30:17 30.08 39 47 36 48 SW W 29'88 29.85 51 54 43 55 W 18 W. 29.60 29.64 41 43 40 44 NW 19 Th. 29-81 29-85 34 38 31 39 20 F. 30.13 30.14 29 35 27 36 N 53 SWI W SW SW SW SW SW W NW W SW SW NW N 1335642211223645 January, 1852.-Mean height of the barometer 29.731 inches; mean temperature degrees; depth of rain fallen = 322 inches. TO CORRESPONDENTS.-The supplementary plate describing the mode of lowering Berthon's Boat not being ready with this number will appear in our next. The Arctic Miscellany received too late for our present number. Hunt & Son, Printers, 6, New Church Street, Edgware R cad. A LIGHT ON THE BASSES CONSIDERED. MR. EDITOR.-The subjoined correspondence affords ample testimony of the necessity of erecting a lighthouse on the Basses, and may be considered as a very material advance towards the attainment of that important object. With such a prospect of a successful result to the strenuous exertions which I have made, it is my bounden duty to promote and forward so desirable an event through the medium of the press; and I am confident that a due consideration of the imminent danger incurred by all ships and vessels which, on their onward course from the eastward and the westward, must round the Great and Little Basses, will carry a full conviction of the urgent necessity of guarding against so hazardous a risk. The occasional and indeed unexpected disasters which arouse public attention, ought to afford useful lessons of dear-bought experience; but if we all slumber at the port of vigilance, some fearful and frightful catastrophe may be suddenly announced, and at once proclaim the neglect and indifference to that warning voice which, if attended to in due time, might have averted so terrible a disaster, and imagination can vividly pourtray the direful consequences of shipwrecks on either the Great or the Little Basses. Experience has shown that the dread and apprehension of so disastrous NO. 4.-VOL. XXI. 2 A an event has, in many instances, most happily led to escape, because those well known and terrible rocks induce more than an ordinary precaution, and commanders of ships and vessels are so fully aware of the perilous position to which they may be driven, that they haul off, and give them a very wide berth. But, Mr. Editor, we should bear in mind that the safety of navigation, the security of life and property, and the speedy transmission of public mails should not be so placed in jeopardy, because on some dark and boisterous night, the utmost skill and vigilance, the utmost care and precaution may be set at nought, and without a well known beacon to mark his guarded way, the mariner may be baffled in all his anxious endeavours, and wrong in all his calculations, until the reality of danger is fearfully manifested by the cry of breakers ahead. The only argument that may, by force of prejudice and opposition, be adduced against the erection of a lighthouse on the Basses, can arise from that confidence which is reposed in an improved system of navigating and managing ships and steamers, and the length of time since the occurrence of any serious disaster on the Basses. Such an argument is at once set aside by the correspondence herewith, to which I can add the concurring testimony of the late Rear-Admiral Inglefield, of Commodore Sir Henry Blackwood, and every other naval officer with whom I have been in communication-whilst Commodore Lambert who is well acquainted with the Indian Seas says, (in a letter to my address, dated 24th of July last,) "I am glad to perceive that you are at work again on having a light placed on the Basses. There is no place in my opinion, where one is so necessary, and if not soon attended to, we shall see one of the Company's steamers lost on these rocks;"-and when Captain Darke forwarded me the letter herewith from his brother officers, he said, "It would take me too long a time to give you an account of all the hair-breadth escapes experienced by many of those who have signed this memorial, but I do trust that 'ere long, a good light on the Basses will relieve us commanders from many hours of anxiety, which all must experience who may pass the Basses unguarded as they are by any light or beacon." By the last mail, I had the pleasure to receive a letter from Mr. Hume, M.P., dated the 16th August, in which he urges me to persevere in my endeavours to obtain a light on the Basses, and renews the promise of his influence and support. He has also forwarded me some valuable and interesting documents on the lighthouse system, compiled by Mr. Alexander Gordon, C. E., whose zealous and indefatigable labours are continually directed towards the improvement and extention of lights in all parts of the world: as those documents are, in a maritime point of view, of considerable importance, I will take an early opportunity of laying them before the public. be a I am of opinion that the next step in furtherance of the project should careful survey of both the Great and the Little Basses, because, my friend Captain Harris, has brought to my notice, that the distance of the two extremes, from N.E. to S. W., is at least twenty-six miles, whereas in Horsburgh's Directory, it is mentioned that they are only twentyone miles assunder. Captain Harris's statement, differs very slightly from the relative positions assigned by Lieutenant Raper, R. N., in the third edition of his very able elementary treatise on navigation, which contains a most valuable table of maritime positions deduced from the late surveys.— Now, although there can be no doubt that a light at the same elevation, and of the same brilliancy, as the Madras light is discernable from the mast-head of a ship (in ordinary weather) beyond the distance of twenty-one miles, yet when we take into consideration the hazy and occasional thick weather off the Basses, it is obvious that some doubt and uncertainty would prevail, which, where beacons are concerned, should be most carefully avoided. Under all these circumstances, it is advisable to take counsel from the following information, for which I am very much indebted to my friend Captain Harris, of the P. and O. S. N. Company's ship, Hindostan, tơ whom, another old friend of mine, Captain Stuart, Master Attendant of Colombo, has thus written: "I thank you for the information you kindly sent me regarding the Basses: your suggestion of a floating light accords with the recommendation of the late Captain Sir J. G. Bremer, R. N., of Her Majesty's ship Tamar, and the late Captain Dawson, of the Royal Engineers, who, personally inspected and reported on the Basses, in 1826. I remember reading their report and talking over the matter with my late friend Captain Dawson, and so far as my memory serves me, they recommended a beacon being placed on the Great Basses, and a floating light between the two Basses. The copy of their interesting report has been missing for some time from the records of Ceylon, but, it is possible our friend Captain Biden may find a copy of it at Madras." The situation of the Great Basses assigned by you, agrees with that I had given it, which is founded on the best information I could obtain; not so that of the Little Basses, your position of them, being two miles to the eastward of the spot 1 intended to assign them. I have, however, adopted your longitude, not only as being the most likely to be correct, but decidedly the most safe. From the enquiries I have made, I do not think there there is any copy of the report referred to by Captain Stuart in either of the public offices here, but the Nautical Magazine, of July 1848, states as follows: A report of Captains Bremer and Dawson says "The Great Basses, on the south-east coast of Ceylon, consists of two small fields of red granite, each of sixty to seventy feet in breadth, und 120 or 130 feet long, the utmost rise of which above the level of the sea is nine to ten feet." "There is a considerable underwater connection between the two, and breakers extending to north-east and south-west, about 800 yards in all of broken water. "The sea, particularly from the southward, is broken at fifty yards distance. The easternmost or outermost of these rocks, is in 81° 39' 28" east, and 6° 11' 48" north, about eight miles from the main land, having a clear passage all round them, and a depth of never less than three and a half fathoms, with fifteen or twenty yards inside, and fifty yards outside them. “Recommend a beacon on the outer rock. "The Little Basses, in 6° 25′ 53′′ north, and 81° 58′25′′ east, are far more dangerous in their nature, the shoal water extending beyond them fully three miles, and in a manner and to an extent not laid down in any chart, or mentioned in any account of them. At that distance a spot was found with only four and three-quarter fathoms, and much broken ground with five to six and a half fathoms, where soundings are laid down as nineteen fathoms. "A point bearing N. 60° W. from the Little Basses, also recommended as a site of a lighthouse, and about six miles to the westward of the Kombochan river, barred at its mouth, or a floating light inside the reef." In all probability, the foregoing is only a brief abstract from the original: it is, however, of considerable importance, because it proves that there is ample space and a solid foundation on the Great Basses for the construction of a lighthouse on any scale, and it shows that the Little Basses are more dangerous and extensive than is generally supposed. The longitude of both shoals varies from their position as noticed above, but that difference may be owing to the former erroneous longitude assigned to Point de Galle and other remarkable places on the Malabar and Coromandel Coasts which have subsequently been rectified. It is worthy of remark, that those talented officers who inspected the Basses, were somewhat inclined to recommend placing a light on the coast adjacent to the Little Basses, but that remarkable haze which is frequently known to obscure the most conspicuous land-marks by day, would so dim the illumination by night, as to render it a very difficult matter to conjecture the distance from which it might be visible-and as the soundings are so irregular that no reliance can be placed on their aid, it is obvious that a light intended to guard vessels from so very dangerous a reef of rocks as the Little Basses, should be so situated as to give the mariner the most perfect confidence in his approach towards it, and all persons who have well considered this question agree with me, that a light on the coast could not be depended upon as a sure and certain guide, and that such a plan is decidedly objectionable. A reference to my former communications on this subject will show that under an impression that the distance from one extreme of the Basses to the other, is not beyond twenty-one miles, I considered that a tower on the Great Basses, on which a first-rate light should be ex |