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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    officer of the Alma therefore had to decide the colour of only the bright (i.e., white) stern-light of the u Cambrian Princess. Case 36.—In the year 1902 a collision occurred on the lower Elbe at Nienstodten between the steam tug Hansa and the passenger steamer *' Primus (7 and 31), in which 107 lives were lost. At the time of the legal proceedings the possibility of the accident having been caused by colour-blindness was often discussed in the press. No steps appear to have been taken to find out whether the captain of the Primus was colour-blind or not until the spring of 1907, when, in consequence of an article by the late Professor W. Nagel (42) in the Hamburgischen Korrespondenten, the man was examined and found to be colour-blind, and, according to Gruttmann (40),had confused the red with the green side light of the other vessel. Dr. Sannemann of Hamburg (44), who has kindly made further inquiries for me from the doctor who carried out this examination, writes (on April 26th, 1913) confirming the above statement, and adds that the examining doctor is now not quite sure whether there was or was not defect of form-vision also. He states that the visual efficiency of this captain, all in all, was found not to fulfil the require- ments for service at sea, but for the officers of small passenger steamers, such as the Primus was, plying* only between places on the Elbe, no definite standard of vision is required. Case 37.—Galloway (37) records a case of a trawler that went ashore in a snow-storm when in charge of a mate whose form-vision was very defective, E. being only -3-^, not improvable; L. y^- partly, raised to |- partly by — 1 .D ; traces of old keratitis; colour vision normal. It does not appear certain that this casualty could have been avoided if the mate's sight had been perfect. Case 38.—The running down of the iron-clad Van- guard by the iron-clad Iron Duke on September 1st, 1875, has been held to have been due to the defective form- vision of one of the look-out men. The vessels were in line