MR. WETHERILT'S STORY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIII, Issue 273, 17 November 1902, Page 7

MR. WETHERILT'S STORY.

THE CAUSE OF THE DISASTER.

DELAY IN REVERSING THE ENGINES.

Through the courtesy of Mr. Twigden, a "Star" representative was enabled to jal! upon Mr. Henry Wetherilt this morning at Mr. Twig-den's residence in Uemuera. It was under medical advice that Mr. Wetherilt was removed from the noise of the city into the quiet of the pretty suburb where he is now being nursed back to strength. Owing- to the weak condition of the patient only a very brief interview was accorded.

Mr. Wetherilt said. "I was on deck at the time of sightiug the rocks. WE wsre going very, very slow owingto the fog. Close on eleven o'clock the man forward sang out, 'Breakers ahead.' I and Captain Reid had already just seen them. Needless to say the telegraph i-arig 'astern,', and I went to and from the engine room skylight and the ship's side, anxious t.6 see ike vessel going astern. But the engines could not be reversed for some considerable time. They were eventually reversed, but by this time \ we had been thrown up over the ; Crags at the side of the rocks. From my knowledge, as an engineer, I could see that there had evidently been Some difficulty preventing the engines from being- reversed, and I «m emphatically say that had the vessel gone astern when the telegraph first rang for it, there was so little way on her that there would have been no mishap. "The passengers," said Mr. Wetherilt. "generally behaved very well under such an exciting- time as that. I j assisted to get the No. 1 boat out, j and Captain Reid left with her intending to get back again for me. The No. 2 boat was being1 lowered with the after falls tight, which would have thrown everybody into the water. I attended to the falls, and we ,'oaded the boat with women and children. There were two Asia- j tics here, and, fortunately, my little | knowledge of Arabian enabled me to j address them pretty roughly and restrain them from rushing the boats. As soon, however, as the boat touched the water tliey dived off and got-! in. On looking round I Saw that I j had no other means of escape ,but the last raft, which came pitching off from the awning deck aft. There ; was a small empty cask on it. Very shortly we had 19 persons aboard the raft, the deck of which was four or five inches below water. It was utterly useless to attempt to pull j the raft, and we were entirely at the mercy of the waves and currents, j I endeavoured to make use of toe J currents with the sea anchor to the j best oi mv ability, and I am sure ■ that we got close to the North Cape on one occasion on account of the commotion of waves and currents which 1 noticed. Prior to this we implored the occupants of the other raft to take off some of our people as theirs was a more modern raft and was well above water. They took oft , three, one of whom was the man whose hand had been crushed, and whose finger was afterwards ampivta- , ted. We asked them to take the j stewardess, but they could not .cc their way to do so. As to our trials on the raft. I need only say that the j accounts Which1 have been given by ; little discipline therr if P°ss *ble' 'J*l I stow of the two apples between the Sixteen of us is quite correet and as we divided them round one utterea r P raver that we might be sustained tflir^liSSrt"«lr.a to tender hi; thanks to the large njmbtf o friends who have been i** 01*1 "* *^ or him and sending kindly messa o es from all parts of the colony.