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New Zealand Mail, Issue 879, 4 January 1889, Page 28

nine months ago attention was directed in a most forcible mariner to the urgent necessity of a light .on Stephen Island as a guide to mariners, by enabling them to distinguish it from Kapiti. The urgency of this requirement was then shown by the fact that two vessels were wrecked inside Kapiti—first the Pleione on the Waikanae Beach, and then the Weathersfield on the Otaki Beach, a very short distance from one another—hardly three weeks intervening between the two casualties. In the case of the Pleione the mishap was attributed by her captain wholly to the want of a light on Stephen Island. The , vessel had apparently drifted out of her course, and the captain, sighting land, supposed that he had made Stephen Island, in which case the vessel, by keeping a little to the northward, would easily have been able to make Cook Strait, and so would have reached port. The land sighted, however, which the captain had mistaken for Stephen Island—there being no distinguishing lightturned out to be Kapiti, and on at--fceippting t_9 run cleaj- qf it to tjbe

northward, the vessel went straight on the beach and was wrecked. The case of the Weatherßfield was similar, and she is Btill lying stranded at Otaki, while but for the prompt action of the owners of the Pleione that fine vessel might also have been numbered among the many ill-fated ships whose hulls were left to whiten on those inhospitable shores. At the time of these mishaps we urged the necessity of losing no time in placing a light at Stephen Island, but so far nothing seems to have been done, and the neglect apparently shown on the part of the proper authorities may at any time involve fresh disasters such as happened to the Pleione and Weathersfield. Surely this ought nob to be needed to awaken them to their manifest duty ? They may rest assured that, should yet another disastrous and fatal shipwreck result from their delay in providing the means of prevention so plainly pointed out by the previous mishap, they would subject themselves to the severest reflections, and would find themselves held up to execration in every part of the civilised world. Wb presume the explanation of the otherwise unaccountable dilaloriness which has been exhibited is simply that Ministers desire to postpone the expenditure over the end of the current financial year with the object of making the colonial balance-sheet look better. But we cannot regard this as at all an adequate motive for procrastination in a matter of such serious importance. Should another fatal wreck occur in consequence of the absence of a light on Stephen Island, there can be no doubt at all that the responsibility will rest with the Government.