WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1886.

Auckland Star, Volume XVII, Issue 247, 20 October 1886, Page 2

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1886.

The marine fathers have not yet arrived at a solution of their troubles over the pilot service, and it would appear from the opinion of their law advisers, read at yesterday's meeting, that the way is still very far from being clear. The Board, after advertising for tenders for the performance of a specified service, entered into a contract with the owners of the tug Awhina; but Captains Cooper and Sainty, the pilots previously in the service of the Board, were not so easily to be shaken off. They have chartered a cutter and embarked in the business at their own risk and cost, and have displayed such enterprise that " the regular dustman " is very hard pressed indeed. The pilot cruisers have gone further and further out in search of inward bound vessels—so far out in fact, that there is a risk of vessels sometimes getting in to the entrance of the port unobserved, while all the pilots are cruising out at sea—nevertheless, the competition has been to the distinct advantage of shipmasters. On Sunday, for example, the barque Helen Denny would probably not have got into port that day but for the picking up the pilot cruiser between Tiri Tin and the Little Barrier; and on the last arrival of the mail steamer the free lances brought the big ship in, although the service is without fee. It is hardly to be wondered at, however, that the regular contractors complain that while they are bound down to certain conditions, their contract is worse than a farce if it binds them and not the Board. Clearly flhey suffer an injustice, which ought to be promptly remedied. But the proper remedy seems to us to lie in the removal of all restrictions to competition, not the abolition of an arrangement which has so far produced suck satisfactory results. A monopoly by the contractors would, we fear, prove rather worse than the direct management of the Harbour Board, except that the Board is relieved- by it of the £1000 a year loss which accrued on the old service. Irrespective of the impropriety of any interference with thoroughly qualified pilots, who ask for no favour, we doubt the power of the Board, legally, to prevent them from exercising their skill and local knowledge in a free enterprise. Th'efe fe a difficulty with regard to' the mail steamers, which the Board have to supply with free pilotage, but an arrangement might probably be come to with the competing pilot services by which, so long as they continue to exercise the Board's license, each shall be responsible 1 for bringing in the mail steamers on alternate months. We doubt very much whether the existing competition will last—the rival services cannot both pay—but the adjustment of the matter is better left to the operation of the natural law at the " survival of the fittest" than if regulated by any arbitrary interference on the part of the Board.