Mr. Furlong's Lecture Last Night

Mr. C. W. Furlong lectured on "The Greek Sponge-Divers of Tripoli and the Finding of the Frigate 'Philadelphia'" in the Union last night, showing a large number of very clear slides from original photographs.

The life of the divers entails many hardships. Six months in the year they work from sunrise to sunset, often remaining under water for 50 minutes at a stretch and being forced to go down again almost immediately. They are attacked not only by sharks, but by diver's paralysis, a disease which sooner or later seizes almost all of them.

The Mediterranean, he continued, has always been the field of piracy, but the United States was not affected until by the Revolution it lost the protection of the British navy. Treaties and tribute proved vain, and in 1800 we commissioned our first frigate to fight the corsairs, and not long afterwards three more, in cluding the "Philadelphia." Enticed by a small boat of the enemy, the "Philadelphia" ran on a reef. Captain Bainbridge dismantled it, as harbor craft swarming with armed men compelled surrender.

The Tripolitans floated the frigate, raised the guns, and the refitted ship lay under the guns of the forts when the "Intrepid", a small ketch, brought in by night about 75 men led by Lieutenant Decatur and a Sicilian pilot. The frigate was boarded and burnt, and the ketch escaped under fire of the harbor guns.

Mr. Furlong found no clew to the position of the boat in documents, but from a chance acquaintance, whose father had seen the event. There remained of the hull only the ribs and keel two fathoms deep in sand and covered with fossilized matter