ADEQUATE BOATS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8750, 4 June 1914, Page 6

ADEQUATE BOATS

' It is interesting to learn that the Aquitania carries boats enough te accommodate the people she was built to carry. When the provision of this supply was suggested after the Titanic disaster there was objection from shipbuilders and naval architects that it oould not be done. A world discussion ensued. The International Commission for inquiring into the question of safety at sea had the benefit of this discussion through many witnesses examined before it. After consideration it reported recommending the supply of sufficient life-saving apparatus, with the condition that the same consist—so far as the compulsory character cf the clause went—of two-thirds boats and one-third rafts. It was palpably a compromise. The Aquitania of the Cunard Company is the biggest British-owned ship, and is built to carry something over 4000 people, including the crew. With snch a vast] problem of emergency floatage to deal with the owners have not thought of any compromise. They ordered their builders to supply boats for all, and to have them housed .on deck. There are accordingly on board the Aquitania now steaming between Liverpool and New York, eighty large lifeboats stowed on her decks,' with the latest and most up-to-date appliances for placing the boats in the water. But the chief feature of this mammoth’s boat equipment is a pair of large motor-boats, fitted with wireless installation with a range of between Xoo and ISO miles. These boats are over and above the full complement of the emergency floatage—the i eighty large lifeboats- above-mentioned and are stowed one on each side of the boat deck. It is their function to tow ordinary lifeboats. They are "each 30ft long by 9ft 6in in breadth, they have ample space for medical stores, blankets, and other necessaries. Their engines are protected by closed compartments, forward of which ! each has a sound-proof room for the wireless operator. They are driven by Tbornycroft four-cylinder motors, “complying in all respects with the suggestions of the Boats and Davits committee,” as one chronicler has it. Among other equipments they have each “a watertight well fitted with seats and lockers.” All the emergency saving equipment of eighty lifeboats and two big motorboats are stowed on the boat dock without the smallest interference with the comfort of the passengers or the working of the ship. After the numerous expert representations of the impossibility of this provision, the magnificent work of the Cunard Company is greatly to their credit. Under such conditions as prevailed in the itmpross of Ireland wreck such a complete boat plant as the Aquitehia’s could not have saved every life. Much of the plant probably would have been destroyed. But that it might have saved more lives than were rescued may still be regarded as possible. In the ease of the' Titanic every soul would have been taken off in comfort by such a boat plant. And after the ship went down there would have been a great mosquito fleet among the icebergs, and perhaps a circle of steamers summoned by wireless messages from the motor craft. What a splendid companion spectacle to the scone of the fiery Voltarno wreck that would have made!. And how instructive! After the 'esnmple set by the Aquitania such a spectacle advance:, into the region of ordinary possibilities. Less than twenty years ago no big carrying ships carried boats enough for their people. To-day one carries enough for her complement of 4000. The fact marks an important advance in a direction long neglected, and supplies a powerful reason for the absolute ending of that bad practio*.