WELLINGTON ITEMS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5762, 5 January 1897, Page 4

WELLINGTON ITEMS.

[From Our Correspondent.] WELLINGTON, Jan. 4. . THE STRANDINC4 OF THE RUAPEHU. It is hardly necessary to report that the Euapehu's mishap is, so to speak, in the mouth of everybody. The question of how the accident could have occurred in broad daylight is exercising the public mind a good deal. What arrests attention particularly is the statement of several passengers that, before the ship struck, they saw land on the port bow. Now the Spit is a wilderness of sand that runs out from Cape Farewell due east some fifteen miles, as may be seen by anyone who chooses to. glance at the Admiralty chart. At the first glance it is evident that a vessel coming from the westward has no business to have any " land on the port bow until after passing the lighthouse, which stands near the eastern end of the Spit. If land was really seen by the passengers on the port bow, and some of them are quite positive on the subject, it follows thatthe steamer after; passing Cape Farewell must have headed shorewards and brought the sand dunes of the lighthouse on the port bow ; that, in fact, she must . have been trying to go inside the lighthouse. This will no doubt be explained at the inquiry' As to the fact that the disaster, which was reported to the lighthouse by the Charles Edward, was not reported here till the next morning at the regular telegraph hour, that fact is very disquieting. The lighthouse is in telephonic communication with Collingwood, but Collingwood is a nine to five station, and thoughthe disaster was known early in tbe night at the lighthouse; no news of it was sent, anywhere till nine the next morning. Now' -at Tiritiri, near Auckland, the lighthouse is in telephonic communication with Waiwera, a nine to five station, but ! at five Waiwera is switched on to Aucklajnd, and anything happening during the night, up to the closing of the Auckland station at all events, can be announced. The public asks, Why not this system everywhere ? It is a query which will, I venture to think, bear fruit. THE MARINE ENGINEERS' STRIKE. In reference to the strike of the engineers there is not much chance of its including the New Zealand trade in any way. The Amendment Act to the Shipping and Seamen's Act was introduced by Mr Pinkerton last session at the instance of, the Engineers' Association. It proviides, inter alia, that the colonial rate of wages shall be given on all vessels engaged in the colonial trade, whether locally owned or under charter. It also regulates the number of engineers to be carr/ed according to tonnage and distance. /Now these points constitute the principal demands of the Engineers' Association in Australia. The Act does not affect the Union .Company, whose practice has been in accordance with its provisions. It was aimed; as far as I can learn, at the practice of another company whose ships did not carry the same complement of engineers as the Union ships. /