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TWO STORIED BOATS.

One's echoolbook memories of heroic Grace Darling are revived by a London newspaper par which states that the coble in which the girl of the Fame Islands lighthouse, with her father, saved nine people from a wrecked ship in 1838, is still preserved and is now to be given a permanent home at Hamburgh, Northumberland. That coble of deathless story is an open boat twenty-one feet in length with a beam of six (feet. It has been repaired and the place where it is to have a house all to itself is near the spot where Grace Darling is buried. Side by side with this mention of a boat which is treasured as a holy thing is set the poignant and splendid story of a curious little craft, the sea-battered framework of a round-ended boat, which is secured to the wall of the main hall in the Oliristchurch Museum. This is a coracle such as was used by the ancient Britons and which, it is said, is still in use on one •or two remote parts of the West of Ireland. It is the boat which the fifteen survivors of the wrecked four-masted barque Dundonald made out of the gnarled and tough branches of shrubs on Disappointment Island, in the Auckland group, in 1907, and in which they crossed the sea to the main island after a hard winter life of seven months on a gale-swept desert place. They were altogether eight months in the Auckland's before they were rescued by the Government steamer Hinejmoa. They made three of these coracles before they were able to cross the stormy strait, and the wonder is that they ever made the passage to the main island at all. They had no tools except their knives for covering tho twisted framework, constructed of veronica branches and twigs they used some tattered sails saved from the ship and some of their canvas trousers. The sticks used in the frame had in part to be shaped by fire in order to save the knives. For needles to sew their sealskin clothing and the canvas they used the bones of sea birds. The chief mate of the Dundonald died under his sufferings on Disappointment Island, and the others would have starved had it not been for the coracle they made with desperate, efforts to reach the provision depot. Those castaways, who overcame hardships and difficulties far more formidable than anything in Robinson Crusoe, were men of many countries, but. chiefly British—English, Scottish, Irish, Australian. New Zealand, Norwegian, Spanish-Ameri-can. Their dogged courage, their endurance and perseverance, make an inspiring lesson; and that poor little makeshift canoe is, to my mind, the most precious thing among all the historic treasures of our New Zealand museums. i * . —j.a

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Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19300926.2.47

Bibliographic details

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 228, 26 September 1930, Page 6

Word Count
462

TWO STORIED BOATS. Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 228, 26 September 1930, Page 6

TWO STORIED BOATS. Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 228, 26 September 1930, Page 6