THE LAST CALL.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 113, 16 May 1927, Page 6

THE LAST CALL.

When the Government steamer Tutanekai made her recent cruise round our far-off islands lying in the Roaring Forties (and Fifties) down, to the south-east of us, she called at the Bounty Islands and Antipodes Islands for a special purpose. This was the removal of the depots for castaway sailors and the posting of notices that the islands would not be visited regularly in the future. The reason is that the Marine* Department considers eiich visits are no longer necessary since sailing ships have all but deserted the far southern ocean. In the days when hundreds of large ships came flying along those latitudes before the strong westerlies, bound from Australia to England, the Bounties and Antipodes, right in their track, were constant sources of danger. Now it is seldom that a sail is seen on these wastes of stormy waters. And so the necessity for maintaining castaways' refuges on those rocky solitudes is no longer considered a point of duty on New Zealand's part. Hence the notice served on the desolate places, where the only voices ever heard now are the screams of the myriad seafowl and (on the Antipodes) the little green parrakeets. Yet no sailor cares to think that some stray shipwrecked crew on the Antipodes may be faced with that grim notice, "No More Calls," and it is quite possible that warships or other Government vessels will now and again give the desert islands a look-over on their occasional cruises. When Captain Hooper, now the Government Nautical Adviser, was in command of the training ship Amokura, he visited those outlying islets every six months. More recently the Hinemoa or the Tutanekai has made annual calls. Some months ago a notice to mariners was gazetted stating that these visits of inspection would be discontinued. No doubt the reasons given are suflicient to justify this measure of marine economy; still, one would like to know that an occasional visit would be made, just on the off-chance. Probably there would be no survivors from any ship that hit the Bounty cliffs, but the Antipodes would at least give the sailorman a temporary refuge. jq