SINKING OF COBAR

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28540, 20 March 1958, Page 18

SINKING OF COBAR

Detective’s Inquiry At Chathams Detective-Sergeant E. G. Ward of the Criminal Investigation Branch, Christchurch, is investigating the sinking of the fishing depot ship Cobar after it caught fire at Port Hutt, Chatham Islands, a fortnight ago. Detective-Sergeant Ward left for the Chathams in the Port Waikato from Lyttelton on Monday evening and was expected to arrive there last evening. Mr J. R. Jurie, the managing-director of the Jurie Shipping Company. Ltd., which has leased the vessel from the Fishermen’s Co-opera-tive, Ltd., Wellington, for several years, left Wellington for the Chathams in his company’s other vessel, the Coromel, on Tuesday The Cobar sank in five fathoms of water in Port Hutt on March 6. It is reported to have had several hundred cases of fish aboard. Since it was towed to the Chathams six years ago after being converted into an insulated storage hulk, the Cobar has been a fisheries depot ship and freezer there.

A freezer engineer, who was aboard the vessel at the time of the fire escaped, but is said to have lost all his belongings. Fuel, fish boxes, and fishing gear were lost.

It was decided to send Detec-tive-Sergeant Ward to the islands after a report from Constable C. S. Hutchinson at Waitangi was received. Yesterday, the Superintendent of Police, Mr D. R. Sugrue, said he had acted on the constable’s report and sent Detective-Sergeant Ward and now he would have to wait until the detective reported back to Christchurch by radio-telephone. While he is on the island Detective-Sergeant Ward will also make another inquiry which was described by Mr Sugrue 3s “routine.”

The Cobar, which was 113 ft long, with a beam of 25ft, was built in Australia in 1903. It was brought to New Zealand three years later and was a ferry between Wellington and the eastern bays until 1948. In that year she caught fire at Day’s Bay wharf and narrowly escaped destruction.