BOATING MISHAP.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 5, 7 January 1929, Page 10

BOATING MISHAP.

PARNELL BOY DROWNED.

CAPSIZE IN HOBSON BAY.

YOUNGER BROTHER RESCUED.

Owing to the capsize of a boat in Hobson Bay on Saturday afternoon, a boy of 15 named Hunter James Mathieson, of 31 Takutai Street, Parnell, was drowned.

Accompanied by his brother Eric, aged nine years, he left home at 1.30 for a row in a small flat-bottomed boat. They were warned by their mother not to venture outside the basin formed by the sewer pipe which skirts the waterfront and the bay. An hour and a half later three young men, Mr. E. C. Hay, his brother, Mr. J. B. Hay, and Mr. H. P. Connelly, who were boating in the harbour heard cries for help.

They rowed to the spot as quickly as possible, finding the small boat capsized and the boy Eric floating on the surface. Hβ was taken ashore in a semiconscious condition and some time elapsed before he recovered sufficiently to inform his rescuers that his brother had been with him. The three men returned to the scene of the accident, but there was no sign of the elder boy and repeated dives were fruitless. The police and launch owners dragged the bay until 5.30 p.m. without success, but an hour later the body was found floating in shallow water by Mr. J. L. Brett.

The inquest was opened before Mr. F. K. Hunt, S.M., and adjourned after evidence of identification had been taken. It is stated that neither of the boys couldswim. The parents arrived recentily from Christchurch.