The Kapunda Tragedy. LIFE Rafts ETC., ON THE AUSTRALIAN LINERS.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 197, 2 April 1887, Page 1

The Kapunda Tragedy. LIFE Rafts ETC., ON THE AUSTRALIAN LINERS.

The survivors of tho Kapunda are on board the P.S.N. Company's Patagonia, and will consequently be with ua in about three weeks time. Amongst other painful incidents it has tranepired that the young butcher, Leader (whose wife, it will be rem9tnbered, recently walkod into the Thames at Putney, with four of her children, and deliberately . drowned herself and them), was on board the Kapunda with the little lad who managed to save himself. The whole family has couaequently perished within a few weeks. Mr Howard Vincent has taken advantage of the Kapunda catastophe to suggest that tho largo Australian passenger steamers and emigrant ship=3 might well be furnished with more life-saving apparatus— rafts, belts, &c: It is not feasible, he admits, to provide stewneta of the siza of the Orizaba and Austral with really adequate boat accommodation, but in nine shipwrecks out of ten, lifebuoys, belts* and rafts would save many lives. If even when they were no real use, their preaenco would, at any rate, have the effect of restoring confidence ambngsb affrighted passenger?, and so rendering the work ol officers and crew easier. With reference to tho Ada Melmouo having no lights at the time'of the collieiony it was explained at the inquiry that tho captain was accustomed on moonlight nights, when outside the track taken by deep sea vessels, to extinguish the lights.

English and American engineers com* ' plain of the conditions of the New South. ' Wales locomotive' contract, which pfaoti-' 1 cally preoludes them from competing.