On cases of accident to shipping and on railways due to defects of sight / by E. Nettleship.

  • Nettleship, Edward, 1845-1913.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On cases of accident to shipping and on railways due to defects of sight / by E. Nettleship. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    the captain, who came up, saw the red light of a vessel about 2 points on their starboard bow at about 11.30; the quartermaster, at the wheel on the upper bridge, also saw the same red light about the same time. The look-out man, however, stated, apparently without animus/' that he saw a green light about 2 points on the starboard bow, that he reported it to the bridge three times between his first sighting it and the time of the collision, and that he never saw a red light at all. He appears to have been pressed on the point by the fourth officer a couple of days after the accident and before the official inquiry, and to have declared, when told that all the four officers saw the red, that he saw the green only and that he would say so. It need hardly be added that no examination of his colour-vision was made in connection with the inquiry ! But it is difficult to believe that he was not colour-blind. The collision, however, was not caused by any confusion between the red and green lights, and if the look-out man was, as I believe, colour-blind, his defect would not, in the circumstances, have added materially to the risk of accident. The accident was caused by the Toronto going at too high a speed on a dark night in a frequented channel, and not slacking speed in sufficient time when another vessel was approaching, and for this the captain alone was adjudged to be in default. Case 34.—Stranding of the Violet (50). The steamer Violet carrying 1550 tons of coal from Newcastle to London ran aground on the Long Sand sandbank at the mouth of the Thames about 6 a.m. on January 10th, 1892. Weather fine, but hazy, sea smooth. Four fixed lights were factors in the case. The first, i.e., most easterly, of these, the Shiptoash light, was passed normally, at 3.45 a.m. from a quarter to half a mile off on the vessel's port-beam. The next was the Sunk Liyht, which ought to have been passed on the steamer's starboard side, but owing to the master having set the vessel's course, soon after passing the Shipwash, too much south and too little west, was actually passed on