ESCAPED GERMANS
CAPTURE SCOW OFF MERCURY BAY STEER FOR ALDERMAN ISLANDS EYE-WITNESS'S STORY OF THE ESCAPE The latest information regarding the German prisoners who escaped from the internment camp on Motuihi Island on Thursday evening is that they have captured the scow Moa, the property of the Leyland-O'Brien Timber Co., off Mercury Bay. Whether she was captured with or without a struggle is not definitely known, but it is reported that the crew of another scow saw the launch, with the escaped prisoners on board, hold up the Moa and board her, the latter immediately putting about and sailing in a south-easterly course, apparently in the direction of the Alderman Islands. The scow left Omakoroa, a sawmilling place some ten miles up the river from Tauranga, at 12 o'clock noon on Saturday last for Auckland. She had a fair wind as far as Cape Colville, and under ordinary circumstances should have arrived in Auckland on Sunday evening or Monday morning at the latest. Captain Bourkc, an ex-Royal Navy man, was in charge of her, with a crew of five, and as he was anxious to get to Auckland as soon as possible, in order to get the scow unloaded and berthed in good time for the holidays, lie would obviously make the best of a favourable wind to make the trip as quickly as possible. She did not have a big supply of provisions on board, as the regulations do not compel coastal vessels to carry reserve provisions. Apparently the crew of the Moa remained on board.
The capture was made, apparently, on Saturday afternoon, as another scow is reported to have seen a scow answering to the description of the Moa at 7 o'clock on Sunday evening eighteen miles from off Cuvier Light, on Cuvier Island, off the Coromandel Peninsula. The captured scow is 94 feet in length, and has a.gross tonnage of 127 tons, her net tonnage being 99 tons. The Moa was tho biggest scow trading regularly to Auckland with timber from the Tauranga district. At the time of her capture she had a full cargo of timber on board, totalling some 80,000 feet, valued at about £500.
The Moa is stated to have been in splendid order, with her sails in perfect condition, as she had been completely overhauled only about six months ago. Her speed with a good fair wind would be about 10 knots, and she would be quite capable of undertaking a trip to Sydney or any of the islands. Though she has on board a donkey engine for handling the cargo, she has no auxiliary power on which to depend if the wind fails, and this fact should tend to make her capture more easy. It is reported from one source that she has taken the launch Pearl on board, and from another that the launch has been picked up by the scow that first sighted her after she had been captured by the epeaped prisoners. It is confidently anticipated by a number of -people that there should now bo no difficulty in effecting a recapture, but as against that it has to be borne in mind that not very long ago a vessel which was practically a derelict and whose general position was supposed to have been known, drifted about for over forty days before she was finally picked up. Up to the time of going to press no information has been received to justify a belief that the Moa has been recaptured.
The Alderman Islands, towards which the Moa was steering when last sighted, are a group of basaltic islets with some outlying rocks like the stumps of trees, fourteen miles E.S.E. from Mercury Bay and nine miles from tho nearest mainland at Tairua Head.
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19171218.2.49
Bibliographic details
Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 301, 18 December 1917, Page 5
Word Count
625ESCAPED GERMANS Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 301, 18 December 1917, Page 5
Using This Item
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Auckland Star. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 New Zealand licence. This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Acknowledgements
This newspaper was digitised in partnership with Auckland Libraries.