We have so often had occasion to re-wark on the futility and wrongheadedness shen by Naval Courts of Enquiry, that we take great pleasure in drawing our readers' attention to the finding of the Court held here to enquire into the loss of the Pautah, as a model of what such a finding should be, and we can only account for the exception that this has proved by the fact that it was entirely unofficial. The finding must be acknowledged to be both well considered and just, although it bears very hardly on the commander of the steamer. It may be summed up in a few words; the Pautah ran on a per fectly well known coast in a fog, because she was running at full speed, without any attempt having been made to fix her position. Captain Petersen, trusting entirely to his dead reckoning, concluded that he had rounded the North-east Promontory, and accordingly hauled his steamer to the westward; as a matter of fact, he was not round the Promontory, and the course he set inevitably took him on the rocks. The Court: states his offence as tenderly as possible, in consideration of his twenty-seven years of faithful service on the coast, in all which time he has never before allowed his vessel to be stranded; but this long suiecess appears to have given him overconfidence, for the fact remains that he had run 360 miles without verifying his position, though it was his first voyage in the steamer, he had practically no deviation card,—and thisconfirms the suggestion we made at the time, that there might be some peculiarity of his compass which he had not had time to learn,—he had not seen either of two powerful lights, that he ought to have seen if his supposed position was right, and no use was made of the lead, although it is distinctly laid down in his regulations that the lead is to be freely used whenever there is doubt. And the Court points out that where he was just before the accident, the lead is a reliable indication. There were nob wanting proofs, if he had given them due consideration, that he had not passed the Promontory, for the finding mentions that, shortly before, the Pautak had passed two steamers going South, and one going Southeast. Acknowledging, as the Court does, that some precautions had been taken, the look-out being all right, and the wheel double-manned, and that the chief officer, whose watch it was, made a mistake in not calling the Captain when the fox came on thick;—and very thick it must have been, for the chief officer said that he had only time to count six between his sighting the rocks, and the vessel's—striking—there is, apparently, little excuse left for the Captain; and it is one of those unfortunate cases in which a man, con-fossedly most prudent and successful for years, comes to -grief at last from are inexorable, and the most careful commander in the world, if he once makes a mistake, will lose his steamer as certainly as the most careless. We asked at the time how it Was that the whistle was not going, so that the lighthouse keepers might have been warmed to fire their guns, and this question is also asked in the finding. The Court, apparently, confined itself almost exelusively to the actual cause of the loss of the Pautah, and the only reference to the condition of her boats is the statement. that they had been in the water in Chefoo on a recent voyage; nor is anything said about the conduct of the crew after the wreck, We sympathise heartily with Captain Petersen, but at the same time we do not see how the Court, considering the matter conscientiously, could have come to any other conclusion, and we believe that all nautical men will agree with us.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.