BOATING DISASTER.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2, 2 January 1903, Page 5

BOATING DISASTER.

TWO MEN DROWNED,

A PLUCKY SURVIVOR,

A boating disaster, which resulted in the death of two men, happened on the Port River last Sunday 'afternoon. A party consisting of William Parsons (landlord of the Exmouth Hotel, Exeter), Alexander M'Gorm, Roderick Grant, and Ernest Abernethy, borrowed a halfdecker Scandinavian, scow for a sail down the river. When running before the wind near Snowdens' Beach, the boat overturned. Grant and Abernethy swam ashore, but Parsons And M'Gorm

were drowned. A fishing boat passed ijust as Grant reached the shore in an exhausted condition, and a boat put in to assist him, but he pointed to Parsons, whose head was still visible above the water, and asked the fisherman to go to his help. This was done, and Parsons brought ashore, but he appeared to be dead, and efforts to restore animation failed. Parsons, who was a young man, was to have gone down the river with a pleasure party in another boat, but changed his mind, and joined the fatal excursion. The party which •- he was to have gone out with had the melancholy duty of conveying his dead body back to Port Adelaide. M'Gorm'3 body has not yet been recovered. No explanation has been given as to the cause of the accident. . . ■ ...