ADMIRAL ROUS ON -THE LOSS OF THE LA PLATA.

Waikato Times, Volume VIII, Issue 454, 15 April 1875, Page 2

ADMIRAL ROUS ON -THE LOSS OF THE LA PLATA.

Admiral Rous write as follows to the London " Times : " — Tke La Plata was lost by ignorance of seamanship. If when the ship was making bad weather against a head sea fco the westward of Ushant, before she was water-logged, the captain had put his helm up and run under head sails and steam, she might have run into Douarnenez Bay, to the south-west of Brest, where there is good anchorage, or, if he preferred the English coast, to Falmouth. There appears to me to be no more excuse for losing this ship than there was for losing the Captain, or one hundred other vessels which have been lost in the last three years owing to the ignorance of steam captains. The fact is, a regular seaman has resources under every difficulty ; but if a steam sailor cannot ride home on a boiler he is a lost man. He will never make a ship speak under canvas. "When I was a midshipman on her Majesty's ship Bacchante, in December 1812, I took a trabaccio of 80 tons, deeply laden with rice and planks, from off Ancona to Malta. Off the coast of Manfredonia I was caught in an easterly gale ; heavy seas washed every part ot the bulwarks, all the planks of her deck my cask of water, and my only binnacle and compass. Our hatches were well battened down, the sea was breaking over us. 1 got her before the wind with a storm forestaysail, and having only forty miles to run on a lee shore, where we should have been knocked into toothpicks, I towed a hevy grapnel, >vith 70 fathoms of hawser, to deaden her way and prolong our lives. Getting near the high land the gale broke, and I groped my way to Malta in three days. I had four seamen, one of whom fell overboard and was drowned, and our prisoners of war. If I had been brought up by steam I should have been food for dogfishes in 1812. Three years ago I recommended the Admirality to attach sailing ten. ders to every flagship, brig or corvette, without steam power, that young men might be taught to be seamen, not sailors. They prefer an establishment at Greenwich where they may be taught gunnery and mathematics, but neither of these sciences will teach them to save their ship in a gale of wind on a lee shore, or will make them fit to command a sailingship."