PARTY MAROONED IN TONGA

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27224, 16 December 1953, Page 11

PARTY MAROONED IN TONGA

Tour Reporters And Photographers [Special N.Z.P.A. Royal Tour Carrespondent] (Rec. 10.30 p.m.) NUKUALOFA, December 15. One engine of a Tasman Empire Airways’ Solent flying-boat cut out shortly after the take-off early this afternoon on a return flight to Suva with journalists and photographers who visited Nukualofa to obtain a preview of the visit of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh on December 19. The visitors will be marooned until tomorrow, when the normal

• afternoon service to Suva will be cant celled and the flying-boat will be re- - placed by another at Nukualofa early ! in the morning. 5 Included in the party is Mr L. G. » Usher, one of the Fiji Government’s ! senior Royal tour executives. The party was making a one-day air i trip to Nukualofa from Suva. The plane left early this morning, to : allow the passengers to spend six ' hours in Nukualofa and to be received by Queen Salote. They began the return flight to Suva at 3 p.m., but after 11 minutes in the air one of the flying-boat’s engines • failed, and as a safety precaution the aircraft put back to Nukualofa. Repairs to the defective engine cannot be made at Nukualofa, and it is intended to fly the aircraft back to Suva tomorrow on three engines, with onlv the crew aboard. The Tongan Government will give priority over all other building to lhe erection of a tourist hotel at Nukua- . Crown Prince Tungi, the Premier of Tonga, told interviewers in a brief press conference of Royal tour reporters yesterday. Apart from a boarding-house, there is no accommodation for visitors unless they stay with friends. This has reduced the tourist trade to Tonga to a minimum.

Dive of 13,000 ft Planned.— Professor Piccard, who recently descended to a record depth of 10 335 ft in a bathyscape in the Tyrrhenian Sea announced tonight that he hopes to reach the sea bed at 13.000 ft in his next dive off Cape Matapan. Next spring he will attempt depths of ! 20,000 ft in the Atlan tic.—Rome, Dec. 14.