The disaster has been rendered ugly as well as terrible
by the controversy that arose after Captain Kendall had made his statement at the preliminary inquiry at Rimouski. Captain Andersen of the Storstad' has contradicted all the material assertions of Captain Kendall. He denies what Captain Kendall said as to the relative positions of the ships when they were approaching one another; he denies that he backed out of the hole he had made; and he denies that he was lax in manning his boats and picking up those in the water. His explanation of the fact that the Storstad' detached herself from the ' Empress of Ireland' is that she was forced away by the latter's forward motion. In these circumstances it would be most improper for us to Incline to either side in accepting statements. We must Wait for the full inquiry. In some newspapers much is made of the fact that the 'Storstad's ' bows have been wrenched violently to one side. This would seem to show that the 'Empress of Ireland' had considerable way on at the time of the contact. Even then nothing essential would necessarily be proved. One of the rules of the road is that all rules may be superseded, under the prime necessity of avoiding collision, by any movement that the master of a ship may judge necessary at the last moment. The only thing is to wait— and to remember that the forming of premature judgments is both unseemly and unfair. We have written further on the subject in a leading article.
