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The object of the society is the religious, intellectual, and social elevation of British and foreign seamen. It is world-Ride in its operations, having stations in the chief ports of the world, and is associated with 113 missions in 110 ports. In these ports there are 111 buildings, called palaces, bethels, institutes, homes, rests, reading-rooms, or missionaries' quarters. For harbors, roadsteads, and rivers, there are forty-three floating bethels, steam launches, mission cutters, sail and row boats; 1,191 Christian shipmasters, and 124 helpers, have joined, since 1866, its Bethel Union Association, an association of Christian shipmasters who have a flag which they hoist in port, indicating their connection with the union and their willingness to hold or attend religious worship. In the service of the society there are 167 chaplains and missionaries.

The Missions to Seamen, the official society of the Church of England (headquarters 11 Buckingham Street, London, England), is the largest seamen's

society in the world. It employs 3. Various sixty-four chaplains and sixty-eight

world. The Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, London, England, carries on a vigorous work on the North Sea (England), and in Labrador, Newfoundland, by means of its hospital work ashore and afloat. The society owns five large steam vessels, a number of luggers, and has been instrumental in destroying the iniquitous system whereby liquor and tobacco were sold to the fishermen at enormous profit, resulting in loss of life and character. Within the last five years its superintendent, Dr. Grenfell, has interested America in the work on the Labrador coast. Besides the larger national societies in England, there are a number of smaller missions to seamen independent in government and local in their operations, such as the Glasgow Seamen's Friend Society and the Liverpool Seamen's Friend Society. The Seamen's Mission, headquarters at the "The Queen Victoria's Sailors' Rest," Poplar, E., London, is associated with the Wesleyan Methodist Church of England and has for its primary object to minister to the spiritual wants of the thousands of seafaring men who frequent the port of London. The Liverpool Seamen's Friend Society, formerly known as the Liverpool Seamen and Emigrants' Friend Society and Bethel Union, having its headquarters at "Gordon Smith Institute for Seamen," Paradise Street, Liverpool, has for its object to promote the religious and social welfare of seamen, their families, and other persons connected with shipping, and of emigrants, by earnest endeavour to bring them under the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to encourage among them habits of temperance and frugality.

There are several other local societies of minor importance. The foregoing are singled out for notice because of their size and importance.

II. Continental Missions: Continental mission work for seamen is of a later date than that of Great Britain or America. The Scandinavian seamen's mission was begun by the Norwegian minister Storrjohann. In 1864 he founded the Society for

Promoting the Gospel Among Norwegian Seamen in Foreign Ports, popularly known as the "Norwe-

gian Seamen's Mission" with its head-

A similar organization was started in 1867 in Denmark, at Copenhagen, the Society for the Preaching of the Gospel for Scandinavian Seamen in Foreign Ports, with six stations in England and America. In 1869 the Svenska Afdelningen af- Fdreningen fdr uppsgttande of skandinaviska Sjifmanshem i utllladska Hamnar, a mission for the erection of Scandinavian sailors' homes, was established. These homes have nearly always a chaplain attached to them and an active missionary work is usually carried on, resulting in accessions to the regularly established Scandinavian churches in Sweden and abroad. The Scandinavian churches on the Pacific coast of the United States are largely the outgrowth of. this movement which has preserved the Scandinavian element and given it remarkable solidarity in a part of America settled by emigration of mixed character.

Germany's entry into missions for seamen is coincidental with her rise as a naval and maritime power in the decade from 1880 to 1890. Johann Heinrich Wichern (q.v.), the father of the Innere

Mission (q.v.), became interested in

suggestions as early as the year 1849.

German Evangelical congregations in foreign countries, seeing the needs of their countrymen abroad, were the first to realize their obligations and to make efforts for the moral welfare of German seamen. The Rev. F. M. Harms, pastor of the German Evangelical congregation in Sunderland, organized the first congregation in Great Britain and in 1885 founded the General Committee for General Evangelical Seamen's Mission in Great Britain. The Central Board of the Innere Mission in Berlin awakened interest in the Fatherland which resulted in a quickened movement for seamen all over the world wherever Germans were located. The field of the General Committee is Great Britain, except the Bristol Channel, and it is active in forty-two ports with twenty missionaries, six sailors' homes, thirteen reading-rooms. The local committees are subsidized with 30,000 marks annually. The German Lutheran Association for the Care of Seamen began the work on the Bristol Channel in 1887 and sent the Rev. J. Fungclaussen as first German seamen's pastor to Cardiff, Wales. The association began work in 1891 at Hamburg, in 1896 on the lower Weser at Bremerhaven and Geestemande, in 1906 in New York. A third organization was founded in 1895 by members of the Evangelical High-Consistory and the Central Board for Innere Mission in Berlin, to interest the old provinces of Prussia. This is the Committee for German Evangelical Seamen's Mission. The Baltic ports from Memel to Lilbeck are under supervision of a special seamen's pastor. The chief ports connected with the committee's work are Antwerp, Rotterdam, Marseilles, Genoa, Constantinople, St. Petersburg, Copenhagen, Shanghai, Buenos Aires, Valparaiso, and Baltimore, Md.