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p. 10 · Read in the full issue
Boat Lost In
Samoa
Dangers of Inter-Island Navigation
IT was reported in the daily newspapers that on January 17 the motor boat Tiafau, which was carrying 16 passengers and a crew of four, en route from Apia, Western Samoa, to Pago Pago, American Samoa, to connect with the Matson liner Monterey, sank 15 miles off Aleipata in a storm. The captain and three passengers, it was reported, reached Aleipata in a dinghy, but 16 Samoans were drowned and all the mails addressed to New Zealand and Australia, were lost.
The following day, it was announced that the Union steamer Hauraki picked up the 16 survivors and none were drowned.
The Pacific Islands Monthly on more than one occasion issued a warning against the danger that was being run in permit ting inter-island communication in Samoa to be carried on by craft that are too small for the purpose. No one apparently took any notice and a practice which had been severely criticised was allowed to continue.
Writing in the P.I.M. in October, 1933, the American journalist, Marc T. Greene, said that British Board of Trade regula tion, which for 100 years have been the world standard in maritime safety were being violated in Western Samoa and the British tradition of safety at sea dis regarded “to an extent I have never found in any port under the British flag.”
“The trip from Apia to Pago Pago,” con tinued Mr. Greene, “though less than a hundred miles in distance, can be and fre quently is a very strenuous one. It is made in the teeth of the trade wind, and the sea between the islands of Upolu and Tuituila is often rough. Yet, with the single exception of the Burns, Philp boat Makoa, the craft making it are hardly larger than launches. As such they are able enough, but even in ordinary weather the discomfort of the people compelled to make the trip just about passes descrip tion. In weather outside the ordinary their safety is often in question.”
Mr. A. W. Dickes, of the Treasury Department of the Solomon Islands Administration, returned to Tulagi with his wife and two children by the Malaita from Sydney on January 9.