A SHIP SENT TO SEA TO FOUNDER.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 144, 30 May 1884, Page 2

A SHIP SENT TO SEA TO FOUNDER.

Mr. Chamberlain, President of the Board Trade, speaking at Birmingham recently, sai that in one year 3,500 sailors in the Britis mercantile marine had died by drowning— a proportion of lin4o or 30. He said deliberately that most of this was due to preventible causes, and accused the law, which he proposes this year to amend. Among many bad cases he quoted one. A man who had money but no knowledge of shipping, bought a very fine vessel of some 2,000 tons. According to the builder she required a freeboard of sft. 6in. Other authorities said that was not enough, and that she ought to have 7ft., but this owner, who wanted to make money, sent her to sea on her first voyage with a freeboard of 4ft. 9in. She had a fine voyage. There was no heavy weather, but she behaved so badly that when the crew came home they left her and refused to sail in her any more. What did the owner do ? He gave her, for her next voyage, a freeboard of 4ft. 3in. In her second and third voyages she also had fine weather. She behaved badly both times. Both times the crews refused again to sail with her, and on the last voyage she ever went, this owner sent her to sea so loaded that her freeboard was only Bft. 9in. Her crew, which ought to have numbered twenty-nine or thirty hands, was reduced by the owner’s orders to twentyfive hands, and so, overladen and undermanned, she foundered in the first gale that she encountered. Every man on board was drowned. Before he sailed, the captain wrote a letter to his father, in which he said :—“ If I come back from this voyage I will never sail in this ship again. Why should my wife be made a widow that another man may handle a little more gain ? But don’t tell my mother about this—it might make her uneasy.” Mf* Chamberlain added that the most dreadful thing was that in the majority of these cases ths owners made a profit out of the destruction.