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Grey River Argus, Volume XXIII, Issue 3486, 22 October 1879, Page 2

The s.s Waipara crossed the bar on yesterday afternoon's tide, and will sail foi Hokitika on to-day's tide. The Isabella, schooner, from Wellington, and the forest Qneen, schooner, from Wanganui, were towed in yesterday afternoon, in ballast, The Annie Hill, coal laden, was towed out by the p s Dispatch, on the afternoon's tide, for the Bluff A s 'earner has been built in China on a new principle, by which it will be propelled without fuel. Farther details are not given, but b} an imperial decree the sum of 3000 tls has been granted to the inventor in aid of his undertaking. Although a strong feeling is entertained in certain quarters against the breaking up of the old arctic discovery ship Resolute, which, after being abandoned, was found floating in the Arctic Ocean, and after being refitted by tbe United States Government, was presented t > the Admiralty, the order for her being taken to pieces has not been cancelled, and the ship.breakera were to commence working on her on the 3Qch June. Some of the best of the timbers are, as before said. to be made up in furniture, to be presented to the President of the United States.— Daily Telegraph. The Court of Appeal has decided that the Princess Alice was solely to blame for tbe lamentable collision which occurred on the Thames on the 3rd of September last year. Important as this decision is in its results, it proceeds upon a principle which was brought out in the judgment with admirable clearness. There appears to have been no doubt, «ays a Home journal, that immediately before the collision the master of the Bywell Castle gave the order to pat the helm hard-a-port, which was undoubtedly an improper order. The Court of Admiralty, from which the appeal was brought, had found that the Princess Alice was navigated in a reckless manner, and was to blame. Sir Robert Phillimore aud the Trinity Masters who heard the case in the Court below agreed in finding that the Bywell Ostle had been navigated with due care and skill until "the very throes of the collision," to use the expression of Lord Justice James ; but they were of opinion that, owing to the wrong manoeuvre consequent upon the improper order, she had contributed to the collision by negligence. Hence tbe present apreaL The Elder Brothers of the Trinity House in the Court below were of opinion that if the wrong order had not been given and obeyed, the Princess Alice would not have sunk, though she uilght have received some injury. The Lord Justice, as well aR the Nautical Assessors with whom they consulted, thought otherwise, being of opinion that the order given under the circumstances mentioned made not the slightest appreciable difference, and could not have had any effect upon the collision, or the damage resulting from tbe inevitable collision. The rath dicendendi of the case was, in the worda of Lord Justice James, " one • ship has no right by its own misconduct to put another ship into a position of extreme peril, and then, if tbe other ship in that moment of extreme psril does something in error cf judgment, to seek to visit it with the error of judgment, as if it had contributed to the lesult."