OBITUARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 162, 11 July 1930, Page 15

OBITUARY.

CAPTAIN CHRISTOPHER WELCH. ROMANTIC CAREER OF THE SEA. (By felegraph.—Own Correspondent.) DUNEDIN, Thursday. After a brief illness, Captain Christopher C. Welch, the oldest member of the Master Mariners' Ass'ocia-tion of New Zealand, passed away at his residence at Port Chalmers this morning. On November 5 last, he celebrated his 100 th tirthday. He was born at Great Yarmouth, and it was not till he had nearly reached his centenary that his health began to fail on November 5 last. Captain Welch, was able to recall many incidents in his adventurous career and events which took place in the early days of Queen Victoria's reign. At the age of 14 yeare he was apprenticed to the sea, joining the Olmer Laing" Line of Sunderland. When a young man he obtained his master's certificate and went to New York, where he purchased the three-masted schooner, the Elizabeth Peltier. While in New York he saw iihe first ocean greyhound, the Great Eastern, then making her second trip across the Atlantic. Just after the first battle of the American Civil War in 1800, Captain Welch sailed his vessel' down the Hudson, bound for tihe Cape of Good Hope. From Capetown he went to London, arriving there in 1861. He afterwards sailed the same vessel to Australia, New Zealand and California, besides commanding other vessels. In 1874, Captain Welch and his family settled in Port Chalmers. Later she commanded the forigantine Duke of Edinburgh, which traded to every port between the Bluff and Auckland, and on his retirement from the sea he was in charge of the Otago Harbour Board's patent slip.

MR. L. GIBSON,

The death of Mr. L. Gibson, of Russell, at the age of 78, removes one of the very few remaining links with the early goldfields of Otago. He came to the Dominion from Denmark in the year 1870, after a voyage of three monthe in the sailing ship England. Landing at Dunedin, then little more than a village, he tramped over the ranges to the "Arrow" goldfields, on which he worked till 1902, when he retired to the Bay of Islands. In the early days of 'his mining experience, the primitive methods of pick, shovel, tin dish and "cradle" were employed, but later, he and his partner used a powerful hydraulic sluicing plani in the quest for alluvial gold. Mr. Gibson is survived by his wife and a family of four, Mrs. P. Rickards, of Awanui; Mrs. A. Ryan, of Blenheim; Mrs. A. Williams, of New Plymouth; and Mr. A. Gibson, of Auckland.