MR C. B. STONE'S LETTER,

Observer, Volume 3, Issue 62, 19 November 1881, Page 148

MR C. B. STONE'S LETTER,

We cordially endorse the statement of Mr C. B. Stone in his long-winded and incoherent effusion in the Herald, that " a little truth mixed up with a lot of falsehood is always the most dangerous." We have never seen a better illustration of it than the letter itself. From beginning to end it is disingenuous, and in many places it does credit to its author in the matter of sophistry, especially •where he frequently misrepresents the allegations contained in our article on " Floating Coffins," and then proceeds to demolish his own fabrications as if they were arguments of ours. We give a flat contradition to the asertion that the article in our columns was " sensational." It was written temperately, and, if with any bias at all, it was a disposition to let the owners down as lightly as possible. The fact that a old vessel is trading out of Hobartown while the Grliinpse was only 25 years old, proves nothing. Any man gifted with a particle of common sense knows that a bad life is not as valuable as a good one ; that degrees of longevity depend upon the relative constitutions. To make the argument worth anything it must be shewn that the two vessels were built of similar materials, were of similar build, and were subjected to an equal average amount of wear and tear. The fact is the Glimpse was built of " inferior " materials, and was never classed as a superior vessel. Mr Stone volunteers the information that the reserve price on the Glimpse was £1000, but will he condescend to inform us whether he paid more than £450 for her, and how much he really lost over and above the insurance ? • Will he deny that, after numerous and expensive repairs, she was in the open market at £750 without finding a purchaser, though Captain Norris wrote recommending that the amount be increased ? The crew did not abandon the Glimpse once at Timaru but twice, and the reason they complained of the captain not putting in at some port between Timaru and Auckland was not because they were " fools," as Mr Stone terms them, but because they thought it was like tempting Providence to take her so far in a half-sinking condition. Mr i Stone tries to draw an ingenious glamour over the case when he says " Any fool knows that, if the ! frame was so limp, it would settle downwards all ; the heavier on the ?ceel blocks, as the dock was j being pumped out." Any fool, without spectacles, j •would see that we never said anything about the dock being pumped out. We referred to the occasion when the dock was being filled in, and when, such was the flimsiness of the rotten old frame, the vessel yielded so much to the pressure that the bilge shores floated oxit from under her, while the dock shores remained stationary. As to the coals having been insured by a local company on her last trip to Honolulu, that need not surprise anybody considering the influence Mr Stone is able to exercise in these matters. But the mere insurance of the cargo and not the hull, proves nothing. Insurers of cargo do not, as a rule, trouble themselves to have a survey of the hull. G?hey assume that the consignor has looked to that. Mr Stone is equally wide of the mark when he assumes that our information was derived from Captain Worsp, upon whom therefore he pours out the vials of his impotent wrath. Our information was gathered from a great variety of local sources, and from persons in the best positions to judge of the facts. It will be in the memory of most of our readers that in the case of the vessel formerly owned by Captain Worsp, to which Mr Stone refers, she was successfully run for eighteen months, when Captain Worsp sold his halfinterest to Mr Dransfield, of Wellington. The ; vessel was afterwards run ashore through the carelessness of the second officer on the rocks at Wellington Heads, and broke up on the second or third day. She did not strain and open her timbers like a sieve as the G-limpse did. MiStone's letter is, throughout, a cunningly studied attempt to envelop the whole question in a fog of misrepresentation. It is hardly necessary to bore our readers by dealing further with any of the minor points raised in the letter. We should not have noticed the matter at all but for the mysterious silence of our cotemporaries, within whose legitimate province the subject rather lies than that of a society journal, but we were impelled to deal with it from a strong sense of public duty, jahd we did not shrink from it.