Who Wrecked the Steamer?

Patea Mail, 28 April 1882, Page 3

Who Wrecked the Steamer?

The magisterial inquiry into the loss of the steamer Patea has resulted, late on the third day, in a verdict of strong censure on Captain Edwards, and suspension of his certificate of competency as a master. The Court also censured the harbor master for signalling too early on a neap tide for the steamer to cross the bar. This is blame in a secondary degree ; the primary cause of the stranding being the master’s mistake in not keeping to the channel by steering with the leading beacons in a line, and in not obeying the pilot’s flag-signals to steer more eastward, and therefore nearer to the breakwater. The blame seems to be fairly apportioned between the captain and the harbor master.

Being the lowest neap tide, the harbor master incurred a needless risk by admitting the steamer an hour and a half before high water. An hour later would have been much safer. Bui, on the other hand, the Paten steamer had crossed the bar scores of times with no deeper water, and with the entrance not so broad. The pilot’s experience therefore led him to do again what had been done so often before under similar conditions. Yet there was this new condition, that Captain Edwards had been appointed only a few days to the position of master of the Patea, and this was his first voyage as captain of a steamer on which he had served as mate some seventeen months. He had been in charge while crossing the bar before, two or three times ; but those were occasions, probably, when the wind was not unfavorable for entering the river, when tides were higher, and when there was no fresh. Captain Gibbons would not be likely to put his mate in charge while crossing the bar at the lowest neap tides. These severer conditions required more skilful care and management, as shown by Captain Edwards’s mode of steering when this disaster happened. Captain Edwards ran a course inward which indicated that he had not examined the entrance at low water, and did not accurately know the shape and breadth of the channel. Such ignorance is severely culpable ; is utterly inexcusable. He had no right to peril the lives of passengers, or the safety of property, by neglecting this necessary local knowledge. He seems to have known less than many landsmen whose business is not to cross the bar. Instead of turning the bow inward after passing the end of the wall, to avoid the well-known spit on the west side, he did not (on his own evidence) direct the steering that way, nor did he attempt to reverse one propeller in order to turn the bow more surely towards the wall before reaching the spit. Yet the pilot was waving his flag all this time to direct the course more towards the wall. The captain’s evidence generally was not what was to be expected from a competent master, and was glaringly contradictory on material points. The Court’s decision was not a bit too hard.