SAFETY AT SEA.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 5 September 1924, Page 9

SAFETY AT SEA.

THE LOWNDES KEEL RAIL

LONDON, July 14. No shipping company can be found to deny the efficacy and necessity of the Lowndes Patent Keel Rail, yet the added expense and the fact that the public have not insisted upon its being fitted to all ships’ boats have meant that the mercantile marine of the world has not clamoured for the right to use it. Still Captain P, F. Lowndes works steadily on, and though it is a business enterprise one has to face the fact that it is almost a. crime against humanity that every lifeboat should not be fitted with tills device for use if it should be upturned in launching. The Australian Commonwealth Line was one of the first to take the matter up and now they have five of their passenger vessels fitted. Last November the Canadian Pacific Company decided to instal the safety device, and now the lifeboats on seven of their liners have the device affixed. The Southern Railway’s cross-Channel service is another company adopting the patent, and it has four boats fitted. The patent has been adopted on one. vessel of the Glen Line, and one of the Hall Line. Captain Lowndes has recently been over to Germany, and has interested the Hamburg-America Line authorities, and negotiations are. in progress with the London, North-East-ern. Railway Company with a. view' to fitting their cross-Channel steamers running from Harwich.

It will thus be seen that.no company with a New Zealand connection lias yet seen fit to instal this essentially New Zealand patent, though it is probable that one of the most progressive companies will fit it on the lifeboats of a new vessel. The expense is no doubt standing in the way of immediate action. It seems, however; a strange risk to take when it has- been demonstrated so often that most of the tragedies of shipwreck arise from the inability of the victims to keep a hold, of upturned lifeboats or to right them again when they have once capsized.