EYRE AND THE LONDON BOARD OF TRADE.

Auckland Star, Volume I, Issue 190, 18 August 1870, Page 2

EYRE AND THE LONDON BOARD OF TRADE.

Washington, June 4, 18*70,

Minister Thornton has received and for. warded to the Secretary of State copies of communications submitted on the 23rd of April last by Capt. Eyre, of the Bombay, which ran down the United States steamer Oneida last winter, and by the Board of Directors of th e Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company of London to the Board of Trade, for them to forward to the Lords, etc., praying that the slight punishment ordered by the Court of Inquiry in the case of Capt. Eyre be removed, and the Board's reply thereto. The Board of Directors of the Steamship Company state that they have had the report of the proceedings in the enquiry under their serious consideration, and they cannot but feel the decision arrived at by the Court on the conduct of Capt. Eyre after the collision was not warranted by the evidence laid before it. It appears to the Board that Capt. Eyre, either before and after the collision, did all that a prudent aud experienced seaman could do, and under these circumstances the Board request that the Lords of the Committee review the evidence taken at the Court of Inquiry, and give consideration to any statement which Capt. Eyre may make, and express tho hope that they will sco fit to return to him his certificate. The Board submit a letter from Capt. Eyre, and in that communication state that he has been in their employ eleven years, three years of which as a commander, and has always borne the highest character. They state that they are quite unable to express in adequate terms I heir deep sorrow that an accident, ia which one of their Company's steamer* was conierned, should have been attended by a lamentable loss of life. The most profouud sympathy is felt by them for all the citizens of the United States who have unhappily lost, relatives or frieuds by the foundering of the Oneida, but they cannot help entertaining a confident hope that a careful revision of the circumstances of the case will result hi the rcmov.il of the unfavourable impression which now exists there and here as to the conduct of Capt. Eyre after the collision. In Capt. Eyre's memorial to the Board he states that he would have rendered assistance to the Oneida if he had thought she needed it, as he had seven boats, capable of carrying from one hundred aud ninety to two hundred men, and even if his own vessel had been seriously injured he could have spared several of them. In the reply of the Board of Trade the latter state that they are of the opinion, after carefully revising the record of the Court, that he was guilty of a gross breach of the thirty-third section of the Merchant 'Shipping Act, which clearly states that all assistance possiblo in case of collision must be rendered ; and further of opinion that the sentence of the Court in suspending his certificate, !for six months only, so far from being too severe, is more lenient than the gravity of the offence required, as well as the enactment to which they referred that simply embodies the dictates of humanity and that in disobeying it he has been guilty, not only of an offence created by statute, but of a disregard of the natural duties which circumstances of danger such as that of the Oneida imposes upon those who have been the unwilling cause of the danger; and they are especially anxious to express emphatically then* sense of the importance of those duties at a time wiien the increase of rapid steam navigation augments the danger of collisions, and renders the performance of those duties more imperative. — Philadpelhia Telegraph.