DROWNING FATALITY AT PIAKO.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 78, 4 April 1899, Page 2

DROWNING FATALITY AT PIAKO.

Mr James McLean, mine manager of the Tararu Creek G.M. Co., was accidentally drowned while out duckshooting on the Piako River on Sunday. He was one of a party who left Tararu, Thames, in a yacht on Saturday afternoon for the Piako, where the party intended spending a few days duck-shooting. On Sunday morning Mr McLean, Mr George Tetley, and a Maori went up the Piako Creek in a small canoe. When a mile and a-half from the Kerepehi native settlement, a dog which was in the canoe got up oh one side of it, and McLean while trying to get the dog to lie down again so as not to over-bal-ance the craft, leaned to the one side, and so caused the canoe to capsize. The deceased, who was not a very good swimmer, swam a stroke or two towards the canoe, but it is thought his "gun helped to. drag him under. The Maori tried to get McLean ashore, but failed, and had to let him go in order to save his own life. Tetley, who was unable to swim, drifted down the creek on the canoe, and using his gun as a paddle, he succeeded in getting ashore. The news was brought into Thames on Sunday evening, and a party went across to the Piako with grappling irons in order to drag for the body. Mr McLean was about 40 years, of age, and leaves a wife and six children. Operations in the Tararu Creek Goldmining Company's mine were suspended yesterday owing to the fatality.