The Court-Martial held at Portsmouth on the Captain and Navigating
Lieutenant of the 'Montagu' was concluded on Monday afternoon. The Court found both officers guilty of the charge that "they did negligently or by default hazard, strand, and lose" their ship, and sentenced Captain Adair and Lieutenant Mahan to be severely reprimanded and dis- missed their ship. Lieutenant Dathan is further sentenced to forfeit two years' seniority. The broad facts of the case were that while carrying out some experiments with wireless tele- graphy the 'Montagu' lost her way in the fog on the evening of May 29th, grounded on the Shutter Rock, Lundy Island, early the following morning, and after weeks of salvage opera- tions was abandoned as a total wreck, with a loss to the nation of some £1,500,000. The main line of the defence was that the orders under which Captain Adair was acting required him to proceed, in spite of the King's Regulations bearing on such a situation as that created by the prevalence of fog in notoriously difficult waters. It was also urged that even if he was out in his reckoning, he was entitled to rely on the fog. signal at Lundy, which, as a matter of fact, proved ineffectual. Setting aside the technicalities which render it difficult for a layman to follow the evidence, it is clear that the Court were utable to accept this view, and were further influenced in their finding by the Captain's admission that he had not read the special sailing instructions for the Bristol Channel, and the fact that the Navigating Lieutenant had been allowed to leave the deck and was resting in his cabin when a sounding of only nineteen fathoms had been reported. We deal with the lessons of the case elsewhere : the verdict seems to have been inevitable, but it is impossible not to sympathise deeply with Captain Adair and Lieutenant Dathan, both officers with blameless records and of high repute in their profession.
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