When the Princess Victoria' car-ferry sank in the Irish Sea
1 suggested that the disaster might possibly have been due to the car-doors in the stern being more vulnerable to heavy seas than the solid stern of an ordinary vessel. That hypothesis was endorsed by a former merchant navy officer who had served with the line to which the ' Princess Victoria ' belonged, and was also, I think, subsequently derided. It now finds con- firmation in the statement of counsel representing the Minister of Transport at the enquiry into the disaster which opened at Belfast on Monday. It appeared, he said explicitly, that the ship had her rear doors buckled. This meant clearly; as the rest of his remarks showed, that the water began to pour in there. That, it seems, would not alone have been fatal, for though the car-deck was flooded the ship might still have been saved if a fire-proof door between the passenger quarters and the car-deck had held, which it did not. My comment, then, though only a layman's, seems to have been sound. That being so, it is worth while to point out again that some of the cross-Channel boats which thousands of motorists will be using this summer have car-doors like the ' Princess Victoria's.' Fortunately seas like that which raged on January 31st are not to be expected in summer.
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