LIFE SAVING.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 8517, 8 April 1895, Page 2

LIFE SAVING.

The wreck of the Grace Dent at the Heads, and the narrow escape of all on board from a watery grave, drew attention to the fact that there is no lifeboat worthy of the name at the Pilot Station, nor any rocket apparatus for throwing a line over a stranded ship to enable those on board to land Bafely. The matter has several times been referred to in these columns as one calling for immediate action on the part of the Harbour Board, and has lately been before that body for consideration. After some discussion it was referred to the Board's legal advisers, Messrs Fitzherberfc and Marshall, who advised the Board that it had no power to expend any of its funds on lifesaving appliances. The Board have therefore quietly dropped the subject, and nothing would probably be heard of it until a ship's crew happened to be drowned at the Heads and their bodies washed up on the beach near the Pilot Station, whilst the Board's officers and the residents at Caßtlechff stood helpless to assist in saving life for want of proper appliances. "We have no doubt the legal opinion given is a correct one, but we do not think it should stand in the way of the Harbour Board doing its duty to those who come to the port and risk their lives in trying to enter it. It is not enough for the Board to know they can do nothing as the law now stands. It is their boundea duty to get the law amended, and at the 'earliest possible moment place a properly equipped and safe lifeboat, and an efficient rocket plant at the Pilot Station for the relief and rescue of shipwrecked marinerß there. There would be no difficulty in organising a volunteer ( lifeboat and rocket company at Castlecliff, as there are a number of suitable young men working there who would only be too glad to enrol themselves into a life-saving corps, and to practice sufficiently to enable them when occasion required to render valuable services to stranded vessels. It may be urged that the number of these latter has been very email in the past in conipamon to the trade of the port ; but with the bar in the state it has been for many months pasp, and is likely to remain owing to the decision of the majority of the present members of the Wanganui Harbour Board not to expend

any farther sums of money on its improvement, the probabilities are that either the trade of the port will be seriously lessened, or that etrandings will be of more frequent occurrence. ; During the past few weeks there have been several narrow escapes of such undesirable accidents, as nearly every steamer and sailing vessel that has entered or left the port since the stranding of the Q-race Dent has had the utmost difficulty in doing so, and have in many instances bumped and dragged across the worst places into deeper water, and barely escaped being thrown up on the beach, or sticking hard and fast on the bar itself, to be knocked to pieces by the heavy seas that have been breaking on it for some time past. At the present time there are four steamers lying bar bound at the town wharf since Friday last, and which may have to remain there another week if the weather does not moderate. We merely mention this to show the dangerous state of the bar and the risks mariners trading here have to run of requiring assistance from the shore, which at present cannot be given owing to the lack of proper life-saving appliances at the Heads. A very grave responsibility, therefore, rests with the Harbour Board, the members of which should remember that to that body the interests of the port of Wanganui have been handed over, and the necessary funds supplied for carrying out urgent improvement works. To sit still and do nothing is no doubt the easier way of looking after those interests, but it is a ruinous and utterly indefensible policy under the present circumstances, and will eventually prove a very costly system of spurious economy. Sydney Smith wittily remarked that nothing would bo done to protect public life in England until an Archbishop or a Prime Minister had been killed in a railway collision, and we suppose nothing will be done by the Wanganui Harbour Board to preserve life until a Mayor or a Chairman of the Board itself has been drowned at the Heads in attempting to get ashore from a stranded vessel. Such a disaster would, no doubt, stir the Harbour Board to its uttermost depths, and open the eyes of members to the immediate necessity for action. We trust they will not wait until so deplorable a fatality occurs before moving in the matters above referred to, as they are daily growing more urgently in need of attention.