Shipping.

Evening Star, Issue 3179, 29 April 1873, Page 2

Shipping.

HIGH WATER To-morrow. i. Os ) Port Chalmers I Dunedin 5.7 p.m. 1 5.37 p.m. ( 6.22 p.m. PORT CHALMERS. ARRIVED. April 29—Taranaki, 299 tons, Wheeler, from Northern Ports. Passengers: Miss Austead, Mesdames Francis, Bninton, Messrs \nderson, Matheson, Brnnton, Lees, Millar, Lonnyon, Clarkson, Hooper, Whitcomhe, Webster, Nelson, the Bishop of Dunedin, Rev. Mr Johnstone; and 6in the steerage. Wallabi 101 tons, Leys, from Bluff. Pasdanger: Mr Yates. CUSTOM HOUSE, DUNEDIN. This Day. OUTWARDS. Flying Squirrel, 19 tons, Hughes, for Molyneux. „ r . , Jane Hannah, 52 tons, Kerns, for Cathn s River. Vessels in Port Chalmers Bay this day Ship: Lutterworth. At the Railway Pier Ships : City of Bombay, Euterpe. Barque : Hadda, The Taranaki arrived at 2.20 p.m. The Wallabi left the Bluff at 3 p.m on Sunday, and had to lay off the Heads since yesterday, owing to the fog. The Storm Bird also made an attempt to go out, but came to, an anchor and started this IB iming. The Wanganui was takenintothofloating dock this morning for general repairs, cleaning, and painting. The Maori came down from town last evening, and lay at the pier till 19.30 p.m., when dhe’ steamed out; but it is expected she got no further than the Heads. We learn from Captain Thompson, Harbormaster, that on and after the Ist May, a bright fixed white light will be exhibited from an ordinary lantern erected on the South Head of Waikouaiti Bay, in latitude 45deg. 39mln, south, and longitude 170deg. 41min. 45sec. cast, and will be seen in clear weather at a distance of seven nautical miles between the magnetic bearings of 5.8.f8. and W. by S.fS. This light at Waikouaiti Hoads, though only intended for the harbor, will at the same time be a great boon and convenience to coasters, and will be easily seen from the offing, enabling them to determine their position with accuracy when passing Danger Reef, off Shag Point.

ME PLIMSOLL’S FURTHER REYELA-

TIONS,

Mr PHmsoll, the junior member for Derby, whose “charges against British shipowners” are creating such a stir in England, threatened, if he did not get a Royal Commission to enquire into them, to resign his seat, and stump the agitating the question until he forced— that is his own word—Parliament to grant what he asked. The necessity for that commission is not only shown by the gravity of the charges Mr Plimsoll makes, but is required for his own protection, as he has been throated with a score of actions for libel. He says himself that is what he expected, but he will prove all be says. Ho asserts that “ there are gentlemen of high character in Cardiff, Newcastle, Greenock, Port Glasgow-, London, Sunderland, Hull, Liverpool, and other places, who are longing for the opportunity of telling a Royal Commission what they know, but whose lips arc now scaled by the terrible law of libel;” and he declares that the report of such a commission would “ disclose a state of things wholly disgraceful, shameful, and afflicting. 1 The other day we gave a few extracts from his work. Let us follow him in his charges He speaks of a ship of 872 tons register which was loaded at Newcastle with 1,591 tons of railway iron, and was despatched to the Baltic in mid-winter with her main deck two feet ten inches below the level of the water ! She foundered 18 miles from the coast, Mr Plimsoll speaks of a shipowner who, out of a fleet of 20 ships, has in seven years lost ten; of another he says, “I heard his name wherever I went as that of a shipowner notorious for the practice of overloading, and for a reckless disregard of human life,” and this man has, Mr Plimsoll tells us, lost 12 ships since 1867, and upwards of 105 lives, of which numbor of lives 8!) were lost in two years. He gives cases of vessels insured for double and more than double their value, of others put together with “ devils,” or sham bolts, of which well-named substitutes for the proper copper fastening a Lloyd’s Surveyor found 73 in one ship. He tells us more. Ho tells us of shipowners in Parliament adverse to inquiry, and belonging to the fraternity known in the north as “the greatest sinners in the trade.” He says “ In the year 1870, when my Bill was House the nrst time, the evening appointed/tor the second reading arrived* I standing in the £ linker accosted me thus - ‘Do you expect your Bill will come on tonight?’ ‘Yes, I hope so,’ I said. Ho said, ‘ I am sorry for that, as I have a dinner engagement, and should not like to be absent. ‘ I think you should not be absent,’ was my reply. ‘Why?’ said he, sharply. ‘Because,’l said, I may nave to tell the House of a man whose name you will hear in any coffee-room or Exchange in Yarmouth, Hull, Scarborough, Whitby, Pickering, Blythe, Shields, Newcastle, Sunderland, or any port on the northeast coast, as one notorious for excessive and habitual overloading, and a reckless disregard of human life, who has lost seven ocean-going steamers and drowned more than a hundred men (no inquiry, of course, was held in any one of these cases) in loss than two years, and whose name I have myself seen as one of those whose ships insurance brokers at Lloyd’s at length warrant the underwriters they will not ship goods in before the underwriters will take a lion upon them, and I may have to tell the House that that man is the member for I thought the man would have fainted. He answered never a word. Now he had put on the paper a notice to move an amendment to the second reading of my Bill —viz,, that it be read a second time that day six months. Every member knows that if such a purpose is abandoned, it is only necessary for the member who has given notice of the amendment to absent himself, or to sit still when his turn comes to peak —that is all. Some twenty minutes after this interview I was in my place in a state of strong excitement, because I had just made two powerful enemies. I felt utterly alone in my work, and so sick with excitement and fear that I was compelling myself to think of the poor wi lows I Ltd seen, to keep up my courage, when a hand was put upon my shoulder. Much startled, I looked round, and there stood this man, with a face like that of a dead man, and this is what he said : —* Mr Plimsoll, I have been to Mr Palgrave, and taken my notice off the paper.’ Why did he go to Mr Palgrave ? Why did ho trouble to tell me he had done so ?” In 1869, there was an account of the inquiry Into the loss of the Elizabeth, a collier or 115 tons, and 43 years old. It came out in evidence that the Elizabeth was so weak and leaky that it was necessary to pump her every hour, even when she floated empty in harbor, that she had not been taken into dock or received any material repairs after striking on some stones at the entrance to Dundee harbor, but had been sent to sea- with 180 tons of coal, and five hands, of whom three were lost when she foundered in a gale. The verdict of the Court of Inquiry was as follows : , “That the loss of the Elizabeth might be attributed to her great age, apparently inefficient repairs, and to stress of weather when deeply coal-laden. While deprecating the custom of employing old vessels of this description in the coasting trade, to the manifest danger of life, the Court pointed out that the crews of ships are free agents, and that, in the absence of any statutory enactments to the contrary, the Court could do no more than call attention to the practice.” Another case was that of the Nelly, a vessels, century old I which sailed between Belfast ftnd Ayr with coal. She foundered when the foice of the wind was at 7, or a moderate gale, in which, to use the words of the Board of iraiureport, “a ship, if properly found, and navigated, can keep the sea with safety. Two of the crow and her four passengers lost their lives, and no inquiry whatever was held. Such a state of things is simply licensed murder. There are cei-tain owners whose names are declared to be in such ill-repute that shipbrokers effecting an insurance on goods not yet ■hipped are obliged by the underwriters to endorse the policy with the words, Warranted, not to be shipped in any vessels belonging to .” Mr James Hall, an eminent shipowner of Newcastle, mad® a speech at the meeting of the Associated Chambers of Commerce three years ago, which revealed a state of things that we can only characterise as most terrible and disgraceful Premising that the faot of unseaworthy ships being allowed to pail was beet known to tnow Who wwt

gaged In the maritime commerce of the country, he asserted that in the coasting, and tf some extent in the over sea trade, ships wen engaged which were not insured, and which n< respectable company would insure except al prohibitory premiums; that, to his own know ledge, many coasting vessels had to pumr while in harbor, pump while at sea, and, when overtaken by a heavy gale, too frequently perished with all on board ; that hundreds of valuable lives were _ annually sacrificed to the growing and increasing evil of sending large and valuable steamer's to sea overloaded, and consequently nnscaworthy. To these grave assertions we add the following quotation from Mr Plimsoll’s book ‘* A high authority I have seen in Sunderland, says :— ‘ It is well known to myself and colleagues that there are some hundreds of ships sailing from the north-cast ports which are utterly unfit to be trusted with human life. There has been no instance within my knowledge of a ship being broken np anywhere for many years. They insure them as long as they can, and when re-christening ( and all other dodges fail even with underwriters, then they form mutual insurance clubs, and go on until the ships fill and go down in some breeze, or strike and go to pieces.”