COUNSEL SPEAK

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 152, 29 June 1914, Page 5

COUNSEL SPEAK

EMPRESS OF IRELAND ENQUIRY N THE COLLIER'S STEERING WHO WAS TO BLAME? (By Telegraph.— -Press Association.-- Copyright.) QUEBEC, 28th June. At , the enquiry into the collision between the Canadian Pacific Railroad Company s steamer Empress of Ireland and the Norwegian collier Storstad in tho St. Lawrence river, resulting in the sinking of the liner with the loss of 1024 lives, Mr. Aspinall, counsel for the Canadian Pacific Company, in his address, contended that because the wheel of the Storstad was first ported and then, without authority, changed to hard-a-port when the vessel had steerage way on, the Storstad was responsible for . the disaster. He asked the Commission to find that the crew of the Storstad were inaccurate when they claimed that the collier refused to answer her helm. He argued that she changed her course on a ported helm, which took her into the stationary liner at right angles, and sufficient speed to cause fatal damage. If there had been no such change, the vessels would have passed safely. He contended that to find that tho Empress of Ireland starboarded her helm would be to charge with perjury Captain Kendall, who claimed that ho had not altered his course. Counsel scoffed at the idea of Captain Kendall telling a deliberate lie when ho had just faced death. Mr. Aspinall charged Saxe, the third officer of the Storstad, with responsibility for the disaster by taking the wheel from the helmsman, without authority, and putting it hard-a-port.