FATAL OVERLOAD

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 215, 30 November 1927, Page 11

FATAL OVERLOAD

GAOL FOR UNSCRUPULOUS SHIPOWNER TWENTY-THREE LIVES LOST By Cable.—Press Association.—Copyright LONDON, Tuesday. After trial in the High Court Wat- ! kin James Williams, aged 46, a ship- ! owner, was sentenced to imprisonment ! for one year and ordered to pay the ; costs of the prosecution on 13 counts, j in connection with the charges of sending the British steamers Eastway and Tideway to sea in an unseaworthy condition. The Eastway foundered with the i loss of 23 lives in a hurricane near j the Bermudas. The Attorney-General, ! Sir Douglas Hogg, alleged that ships were persistently overloaded and | foreign ports. The judge, in summing up, pointed out to the jury that although Williams had said he had told his marine superintendent to instruct his captains that they must not overload, he had not called the superintendent as a witness. The case was one of the gravest importance both to the shipping community and to sailors. —A. and N.Z.

Watkin James Williams Is a Cardiff shipowner who made a meteoric fortune. The Eastway was lost 159 miles from Bermuda on October 22, 192 G. In August a Board of Trade inquiry showed that the vessel was laden 13ft Sin beyond her winter loadline. The Eastway was insured for £64,000, and was worth £50,000. Her dead-weight was 9,580 tons, and should have been 9,120 tons. The court blamed Williams for her loss and ordered him to pay £I,OOO toward the cost of the inquiry.