THE Grey River Argus. PUBLISHED DAILY. MONDAY, JANUARY 26, 1874.

Grey River Argus, Volume XIV, Issue 1709, 26 January 1874, Page 2

THE Grey River Argus. PUBLISHED DAILY. MONDAY, JANUARY 26, 1874.

If ever a captain of a vessel deserved to forfeit his certificate and to receive a worse punishment even than this, it is the captain of the immigrant ship Surat. After the evidence that was given during the inquiry there was no escape from the verdict that the captain had, whilst off a strange and dangerous coast, been guilty of negligence and incompetency. These counts were quite sufficient to justify the Court in cancelling the captain's certificate, and yet, strange to relate, a protest against this decision has been got up by some ship captains at Port Chalmers, and we are told that a memorial is to be forwarded to the Board of Trade in England, praying that the decision- of the Court of Inquiry here may be vreeeed. And, in addition, we are informed that already a sum of has been subscribed for the captain. It-is,- no doubt, a pleasing characteristic of seamen that they stick well to each other, but surely this feeling of professional brotherhood has been carried to an excess in this case. No one who. has read the evidence regarding the wreck of the Surat can doubt, that the vessel was lost, and the lives of some two hundred persons imminently endangered through the culpable negligence and misconduct of the captain and some of his officers. Bad ordinary precautions been taken, the shed would , never have been placed in the dangerous position she was. But for the lucky fact that the weather was fine, and that but little sea was on, it is more than probable that, the Surat would have gone down in deep water where few if any xrf Ihp passengers could have been saved. Providentially no life was lost, but it is a marvel iW tjie passengers were saved;- When we read of 'oap^in and officers being mad drunk.; of their giving contrary orders; of a stubborn refusal ,to bowt a signal of distress until forced to

do so by the passengers ; of attempts made to stop the pumping of the vessel upon which the lives of /those pn board entirely depeudedf and of cursings and threatenings against the men who did take steps to rescue the ship and its living freight — when, as we have said, we read 6f all these" things, sworn to as facts by several independent witnesses, the only conclusion to which we can come is that had one single life been lost the captain would have been guilty of manslaughter, and that he i 3 now worthy of the utmost punishment the law will allow. And the Government are bound to prosecute the captain and officers to the utmost limits of the law. Apart from the terrible position of danger in which the unfortunate immigrants were placed, there is also to be remembered that the wreck of the Surat will certainly have an injurious effect upon emigration to New Zealand, at a time too when the utmost efforts are needed to encourage it. This Colony is so distant that the voyage is regarded with more or less dread by the emigrating classes, most of whom were never on the vrater in their lives, and the news of the loss of the Stuat, and the exaggerated accounts of the disaster that are sure to be sent home, will do more to check emigration to the Colony than can be counteracted by the whole iorce of immigration agents. Had : the wreck been attended with loss of life — and it is a miracle that it was not— it would have created an effect similar tothat occasioned by the wreck of Jhe Northfleet. On every ground the Government is perfectly justified in the course it has taken towards the captain of the Surat, and the morbid sympathy of the Port Chalmers ship-captains is deserving of the strongest condemnation.