IN NAUTICAL TERMS

Taranaki Daily News, 22 September 1931, Page 4

IN NAUTICAL TERMS

DOMINION’S POSITION. LOOK-OUT WAS ASLEEP. .Truly nautical parlance was used by Captain F. A. Macindoe, of the Merchant Service Guild, when referring to the present state of the country, in the course of a speech replying to the toast of the “Mercantile Marine” at the combined shipping companies’ smoke concert at Wellington on Saturday evening. “As a sailor,” he said, “I would say that we must keep a lead-line going as the water is getting very shallow, and our dead reckoning has not been too good. The Ship of State has been carrying too mueh canvas, so we have to shorten sail. “A good pilot always remembers three *L’s’—log, lead, and look-out. The first thing we knew was that the man at the look-out cried, ‘Rocks ahead,’ and we did the right thing by shortening sail. We then took a cast of the lead and found very little £ s. d. to float the ship. We have run over our distance so the log must have been out. The lookout has been asleep, so there is only ne thing to do and that is to set a better course and change the crew. So long as we all realise the position and pull together the old Ship of State will claw up to windward before she hits the rocks.”