Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. SATURDAY, JUNE 25th., 1932. KAPONGA VERDICT.

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 June 1932, Page 6

Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. SATURDAY, JUNE 25th., 1932. KAPONGA VERDICT.

u ACTS of God” are frequently blamed for what human errors are alone responsible, but there was no attempt by the Court of Inquiry into the loss of the Kaponga, to evade placing the responsibility for the mishap on the one at fault. There will be general district sympathy with Captain Cox, who is a conscientious and capable official, but from the beginning it was clear that somebody had blundered. It seemed to the layman that either the Harbour-master, or the Kaponga’s captain, had made an error in judgment, or calculation. Captain Gray has been adjudged by the Court as free from, blame, but regrets were expressed that, the warning whistle from the Kalingo was not more emphatic. The Court, on the evidence before it, could not have come to any other decision. The immediate duty of the Harbour Board is to profit from the painful experience, and to institute a stricter system, never permitting its employees to forget that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom from accidents. It is easy to be

wise after the event, but the history of the port, and the known dangers around the bar, should prompt the Board and its officials to maintain something more than good intentions. Nothing should be taken for granted, and eagerness to clear ships from the wharves should not be permitted to overcome discretion. A wreck is a serious thing for all concerned, and particularly so for this port, which has to live clown an old reputation as being “dangerous.” Rival ports do not let shippers forget casualties on this coast, although these are really comparatively few in the last score of years, compared with the number of vessels coming and going. The award of the Court, yesterday, will be a worse advertisement to Greymouth as a port, than the wreck was. The only bright spot in the affair was the absence of death or injury to any on board the z Kaponga. The Harbour Board would be wise to revise its instructions tc employees, on the “better-be-sure-than-sorry” principle, taking the public as well as the shipping com panics, into its early confidence There will be little appeal foi “somebody’s blood,” but the Ka

ponga wreck should be the .last —■ so far as the Grey port and bar are concerned, —due to avoidable human lapses. The thought must arise that the Kaponga was not the first ship to be running serious risk, but the luck happened to be against her. It is a piteous spectacle to see a well-built ship and valuable cargo, being wantonly destroyed by the seas she had ridden over many times previously, and such pity is increased when it is realised that the disaster might easily have been avoided.