A NOTABLE SKIPPER

_____ , j CAPTAIN MURDOCH McDONALD. | I — j HIS CAREER REVIEWED. I Many Waipuites and descendants of the Nova Scotian and Scottish settlers will regret the untoward death of Captain Murdoch McDonald, son uf the late Mr Hector McDonald of the Braigh, ! Waipu. 1 The late Captain McDonald was born | at Waipu in the year 1857, a year after j his parents landed with their six childJ ren from Ardheslaig, Loch Torridon, 1 in the Western Highlands of Scotland, ! some 50 miles from Inverness. Owing to ill-health Captain McDonald went to sea at the age of about 20 years, in the hope that a few voyages would restore him to perfect health. His first trip was, it is understood, with the late Captain John McKenzie of Waipu (the "Prince's" son), who was Ms first cousin, and Captain McDonald liked the sea so much that ho adopted it as his chosen career. Step by step he advanced, until a very few years after going to sea he earned a captain's certificate, and proved a very sucessful master of a number of sailing j vessels. I Somewhere about the year 1895 he went j j into steam and took a mate's position ! on a steamer belonging to the Alexand- j er -Currie Line (of Melbourne), trading from Australia to Calcutta and the East, in the horse trade. Here his knowledge of a settler's life in Waipu I stood him in good stead and he and his ' brother, Captain Colin McDonald, who now resides in Melbourne, had the j reputation of being the best skippers • in the horse trade, their percentage of ! deaths of animals being far and away j less than that of other captains in the i same trade. About the year 1905 he left the Aus- j tralian service and went to Singapore, • where he speedily obtained command of a fine steamer and was for many : years the commodore of the fleet of his owners and commanded probably the finest passenger ship in the whole of the East. He was engaged for many ' years in trading between Singapore, and Penang, leaving the former port j every Saturday '.afternoon and arriving j back every Thursday.

Mrs McDonald, his widow, has made her home in Singapore for some years now and the couple were looking forward to the captain's retirement and to spending the evening of their lives in Melbourne.

The late Captain McDonald avus one of the mildest mannered men one could possibly have met with, -unless rivalled by his brother, Captain Colin McDonald.

From what is learned from caibles received a Malay ran amok on the steamer Klang just as she was leaving Singapore on Saturday, October 30, and Captain McDonald, from the bridge, seeing the trouble, went down, was stabbed in the abdomen by the infuriated native and died from the wound inflicted by the native sometime between Saturday night and Monday, the cable being received by relatives in Auckland on the Monday evening.

The family have had a wonderful life history. The mother died in 1875, being 65 years of age, and the father died in. 1901, at the age of 97.

Of the six children who landed in Auckland with their father and mother in August, 1856, five are still living. The sixth, a son, Duncan, was captain of a fore-and-aft schooner trading between Mercury Bay and Napier, which left Napier one evening in March about 1880 and was never seen again, so that the two deaths in this family have both been by misadventure.

The surviving members of the family are:—Mrs Clark, Mt. Albert, Auckland; Mr J. McDonald, Puhipuhi; Mrs N. Matheson, Remuera, Auckland; Mr Norman McDonald, Richmond, Auckland; and Captain Colin McDonald who resides just outside Melbourne, where he has lived since his retirement from the British India 'Company.