Cathedral Service For Kaitawa Men

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31076, 3 June 1966, Page 8

Cathedral Service For Kaitawa Men

“If it turns out that the Kaitawa was inadequately equipped with navigational aids, and other men are being called upon to run the same risks unnecessarily, then there will be only one course of action,” said the Rev. W. S. Dawson, minister of the Durham Street Methodist Church, in his address at the memorial service in Christchurch Cathedral yesterday afternoon for victims of the Kaitawa disaster.

“It will be up to us, if necessary, to pay more for our freight and amend the law, whatever the cost, to ensure that the men who serve us on the sea all have the maximum protection. Men should not need to die to highlight deficiences such as these,” he said. Mr Dawson said that in the face of such a disaster words should be few. “The men, whom we must presume to have died, were very much like the rest of us, not saints, nor heroes, nor villains. Out of the common humanity we share with them we pay our tribute,” Mr Dawson said.

It was a human tendency today to take the normal for granted, and to forget the worker behind the work. Men

who went to sea chose a dangerous, uncomfortable, and important job, and it was appropriate for landsmen who stayed at home to pay tribute.

"Such a sad occasion as this gives those of us who stay at home this opportunity to pay tribute to all the men of the sea, and to all their womenfolk who have to see them go,” Mr Dawson said. The service was attended by more than 300 persons, including representatives of shipping companies, the Lyttelton Harbour Board, the Lyttelton Borough Council, the Christchurch City Council, the Waterside Workers' Union, the Royal New Zealand Navy, the Navy League, guilds of the British Sailors’ Society, and members of the public. The service was conducted by the Dean of Christchurch (the Very Rev. W. A. Pyatt), the lesson was read by the Minister of Knox Church (the Very Rev. M. W. Wilson), and prayers were led by the president of the Canterbury Merchant Navy Centre (Canon R. J. Witty). Auckland Service

The Press Association says that hundreds of men, women, and children, many of them weeping or on the verge of tears, filled the tiny Mariners’ Memorial Chapel of St. Peter and overflowed across Sturdee street, Auckland, yesterday afternoon for a memorial service.

After the service the rank and file of the shipping world lined Sturdee street and Lower Albert street as the body of Mr J. E. Wright, a motorman in the ship, was carried from the chapel for the journey to the Waikumete Crematorium.

The address at the memorial service was given by the port chaplain (the Rev. L. Brown). Prayers were read by the Bishop of Auckland (the Rt. Rev. E. A. Gowing) and the lesson by the Rev. J. Conveney, port chaplain at Suva.