‘Grave Negligence’ By Ship’s Master

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30632, 24 December 1964, Page 3

‘Grave Negligence’ By Ship’s Master

<Neu> Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, December 24. The master of the Treneglos was censured today and ordered to pay £3l 10s court-costs by the tribunal which had formally investigated the stranding of the ship on Patiti reef, near Timaru, on November 12.

The tribunal, comprising Mr L. M. Inglis, S.M., and Captains D. M. Todd and E. J. McLellan, also recommended the Timaru Harbour Board to make bylaws governing pilotage within its pilotage district.

The cause of the stranding was found

to be the failure of Captain R. B. Oliver to navigate his vessel prudently and in accordance with proper standards of seamanship.

The written judgment today said the captain had failed to comply with the instructions of the pilot Captain A. Grieve, which had been adequate to ensure safety of the vessel. One of these was that he should proceed a mile and a half further to sea before turning south on his course to Dunedin. Instead, he turned a mile short of this point.

The decision said the captain was apprehensive he might be sailing into danger and had made two negligible and ineffective runs to port, in the Court’s opinion. Once he became doubtful he should have turned straight out to sea and taken bearings on various recognisable lights. The captain had placed undue dependence on radar and, according to him, had mistaken the range setting, blaming this for the casualty. Failure To Check In the opinion of the Court he was negligent for failing to check the range setting and also for omitting to study his chart sufficiently before sailing and not using it during the passage of the ship. The captain’s actions that

night amounted to more than a mere minor error of judgment—in fact, to grave negligence, the judgment said.

The Court, however, took into account the frankness of his evidence, his acceptance of full responsibility and refusal to blame any other person, his unblemished 14 years’

record as a master mariner and his company’s confidence in him and its willingness to re-employ him. Competence Clouded “The court feels sure that ordinarily he must have been a competent and careful navigator. That night his ordinary competence appears to have been clouded in some manner and for some reason of which we have no evidence at all. “After so many years of unblemished seamanship his conduct must have been due to some human aberration which remains, so far as the evidence is concerned, inexplicable.” For various reasons, the Court had decided to return his master’s certificate to him but to censure him and to order him to pay portion of the costs of the inquiry, the decision said.