TIDAL WAVE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 112, 13 May 1926, Page 9

TIDAL WAVE.

PALMERSTON GROUP SWEPT.

BUILDINGS ALL DESTROYED

ONE LIFE LOST.

EIGHT BOATS WRECKED.

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

WELLINGTON, this day

The External Affairs Department has received a wireless message from the Resident Commissioner of the Cook Islands stating that the GovernorGeneral, who is now visiting the Pacific Islands on the Tutanekai, had wirelessed that Palmerston Island and the adjacent islets were swept by a tidal wave on March 31, eight boats being lost, the buildings all destroyed, all food gone, and one life lost.

A subsequent message states that the Governor-General landed on Palmerston Island and gave temporary supplies of food and medicine for immediate requirements.

The Hinemoa is taking further supplies.

Palmerston is an atoll, with a land area of only one square mile, lying to the north-west of Rarotonga, some 273 miles distant. The reef carries a number of small islets, which are in the occupation of the descendants of the late William Masters, who settled there about 1862. The island was discovered by Captain Cook in 1774, on his second voyage, though it is said by some authorities to be the "San Pablo*' of Magellan, the first island discovered in the South Seas. The mutineers of the Bounty called at the island, but did not care to make it their home. Copra is the main product, being loaded into a schooner calling at the island only once a year. The population is about 90.