The Daily News. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1911. HIDDEN ROCKS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 99, 17 October 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1911. HIDDEN ROCKS.

A motion was lately passed at the International Marine Conference held in Paris, which will presumably have the effect of placing the onus of mistakes made by ships' officers on the owners or charterers of vessels. Although the captain of a ship may after a disaster be tried most carefully by people who-haven't the least chance of knowing what happened, the captain is almost invariably ruined by the finding of a court. There is no business so exacting as the business of a mariner who is in charge of the lives of so many people and the goods of many, more, and there is no calling in which a mistake or a mishap is sheeted home with such conclusion on necessarily insufficient evidence. It is only, necessary to mention the ease of the Penguin, in the wreck of which about eighty people were lost, and the fact that no one knows to this day why or where she sunk, to conclude that the life of a master mariner is one of grave chances. We do not know, for instance, that boats which are merely paint and rust are not sent by avaricious owners on long dangerous trips; we have no absolutely certain knowledge of the sea and all that therein is; we do not know whether the free channel of today may not be a death-trap from submarine thermal action to-mor-row. Yet we may be perfectly willing to .send a surviving officer to gaol, or. at least, to prevent him from following his profession 1 hereafter. Some time ago about fifty master mariners prayed for a light in a certain spot on the North Island coast. It was apparently assumed that master mariners could not possibly know what they were talking about, and Ihe light did not materialise. For many years it has been urged that as the coast of New Zealand is one of the most dangerous in the world it should be thoroughly surveyed. Some of the charts used, as mariners know, are precisely as they were in the days of Captain Cook. Tfie coast ol New Zealand has an unenviable notoriety for wrecks. It may be presumed that some ol these wrecks have occurred through lack of lights, and that some have occurred because of unknown submarine changes. Mariners are well aware that I there are many ''awash rocks" in apparent deep water and unchart-

Ed around the coasts of the North Island. It has now been discovered that the Three Kings, the sinister rocks on which the Elingamite struck, were wrongly marked on the chart, so that a master mariner, quite helpless in such circumstances, had to bear the brunt of a marine surveyor's error. While everybody will hope that Captain Atwood will be exonerated from blame for the mistake of other persons, it is to be even more sincerely hoped that the proposed re-survey of the coast of New Zealand may be carried out quickly and thoroughly as possible. The inward and outward shipping of New Zealand is very large—far larger than the size of the country would suggest—and it will increase. With its increase the dangers of the coast will also increase, making still greater the necessity for the re-survey. Mr. Millar pointed out in the House of Representatives the other day that the Opposition had been instrumental in stopping the survey of the coast on the ground that the expenditure was too great. The Minister mentioned that the accurate survey of New Zealand would cost £IO,OOO per annum for 25 years. That is to say, it would cost the price of one great, ship in order to save a large number of great ships. One facetious member, during the discussion on this most important matter, suggested that the Japanese Government be asked for its survey of New Zealand. It is to be noted that,the clever member suggested that Japan could do in a week or two the work New Zealand (with the aid of H.M. Navy) will take 25 years to accomplish under present conditions. It says much for the quality of our mariners (and we claim that the mariners on the New Zealand coast are the best in the world) that they so frequently avoid catastrophe. There have been allegations that many .mariners have reported uncharted dangers which have never been added to the charts, but this is probably merely rumor. At any rate, the expenditure of the sum necessary to" the faithful, complete and accurate survey of the coast of New Zealand would be the best insurance against loss of life and property at sea the Government could indulge in.