Master blamed for ship’s grounding

Press, 29 January 1982, Page 3

Master blamed for ship’s grounding

PA Wellington The master of the Pacific Charger, Captain Chiou RueyYang, has been blamed for the grounding of ..'the Liberian-registered freighter at the entrance to Wellington Harbour in a southerly storm on May 21, 1981. The report of the Court, of Inquiry into the grounding was released by. the Minister of Transport (Mr Gair) yesterday. The Court was headed by a retired Wellington District Court, judge,.Sir.. James Wicks, assisted by two assessors.

In the.-report, Sir James criticises the ship’s Japanese owners and managers and the Government of the Republic of Liberia because of their failure to ensure that the ship . was,, manned ■ by competent personnel.

He also criticises the Wellington Harbour Board and one of its pilots, Captain C. D. Smith, over 1 ' guidance given to the ship before it grounded at Baring Head. He said that the primary responsibility for the stranding lay with the master because of bad navigation and bad seamanship on his part. The ship’s officers’ qualifications for obtaining their Liberian licences or Taiwanese documents were suspect. The master should not have attempted to enter a strange port in darkness in the conditions which had pre-

vailed at the time: the second most severe storm in 30 years after the 1968 Wahine storm. Sir James said, “He (Captain Chiou) was navigating his ship by using a smallscaled chart and using a radar set with which he was unfamiliar, and without adequate radar training.” Captain Chiou’s use of the radar had rendered his reliance on it useless and had lulled him into a false sense of security.

- Although the primary responsibility for the stranding lay with the master, the Court was -critical of the harbour board and Captain Smith. •

“I feel that better guidance should be given to ships’ masters, especially foreigners, as to pilot boarding stations, avoiding the vagueness apparent in the official publications,” Sir James said. He said that stricter control should be exercised over staff in the Beacon Hill station as to their duties, especially in recording messages, and that guidelines should be set for pilots as to how to deal with strangers, arranging points of rendezvous, and monitoring the approach of vessels wishing to enter the port. When the inquiry into the grounding had started it had seemed that the proceedings would be short because it

had appeared to be a simple case of poor navigation. Sir James said.

“However, allegations were made that the ship had stranded because of engine failure and this in turn led to allegations of perjury . . . and a considerable amount of time was spent pursuing these allegations.”

He was satisfied that in matters relating to the grounding the witnesses had been truthful.

“Any discrepancies were the result of the tedium of the various hearings and the passing of time.” “They .(the ship’s crew members) were quite blatant in lying about the terms, of employment, wages, false receipts, and passing off boat musters as being boat drills but their inability to explain the connections between the various companies concerned in the ownership, operation, and management of the ship is not at all surprising. “Most of the matters submitted to the Court as raising a suspicion of a plot to deceive the Court were open to an innocent explanation and, on top of all, account must be taken of the difficulties that ?can arise from having to use interpreters.” Sir James said it was quite clear that there had been some “skullduggery” in relation to the recruitment of the officers and crew of the ship, particularly in relation to pay-