FOGS AND CRASHES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 133, 7 June 1932, Page 3

FOGS AND CRASHES.

IN SYDNEY HARBOUR. MARIPOSA LOSES HER WAV. COLLISION OF TWO FERRIES. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, Juno 4. For seven successive mornings Sydney, and more particularly Syney Harbour, has been enswathed in a dense pall of fog. The natural effect has been to render water transport difficult and even dangerous. On Thursday last, May 20, the fog was the heaviest known for 10 years, the shores of the harbour being invisible from the centre of the channel; indeed, the water was invisible from the footway of the great bridge, the ferry boats crawled slowly and cautiously through the gloom, missing each other by inches, and bringing up at the wrong wharf or even in the wrong bay, and finally unloading their scared passengers an hour or so behind schedule time. By good luck, and largely owing to the remarkable skill of the ferry captains and the presence of mind of lookout men and crews, no serious accident happened. But the Mariposa, which was due early in the morning, narrowly missed trouble. When the Sydney manager of the company, in his launch, reached the great steamer, she was well inside the Heads, off Clifton Gardens, between the eastern and western channels. The hail from the stern, "We want tow-boats, and we want them pretty soon," was a sufficiently alarming indication of her position. The pilot steamer and a tug conducted the huge vessel into deeper water, but so difficult was the position that the captain of the Mariposa thought it necessary to publish a statement to the effect that the vessel had not touched the sandbank near the George Heajl, light, and with this the pilot agreed. Collided Head-on. On June 1, however, the fog came down again in grim earnest, and confusion reigned supreme on Sydney"* crowded waterways. About eight o'clock, when very little could be tscen on shore or harbour, a ferry boat left Circular Quay for Watson's Bay, and was feeling her way across the harbour, when she was forced out of her course by a Manly boat that loomed threateningly out of the mist. At that moment a ferry steamer running from Mosinan to the Quay came at her head-on, and in spite of desperate efforts on the part of the two captains the boats collided. The blow was a glancing one, and the boats barely had steerage way-, but the impact was terrific and bulwarks and stout timbers were smashed like paper, while splintered glass and lifebelts were scattered in all directions. Happily the damage done was entirely above water-line, and the passengers, who had fled precipitately from the point of danger as soon as a collision seemed inevitable, escaped injury. But the accident was startling enough to frighten a great many people, and to remind even the more courageous that our wonderful harbour is not a particularly safe means of transit and transport during a fog. A few visitations such as we have endured during a fortnight should make the bridge more popular than ever with North Shore residents.