Court Shown Wreckage

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31153, 1 September 1966, Page 1

Court Shown Wreckage

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 31. Grim relics of the 2500-ton collier Kaitawa, which sank with all hands off North Cape on May 23, were shown to the Marine Court of Inquiry in Wellington today. The Court saw wreckage,

life-jackets and parts of a life-raft from the ship. Several life-buoys which had also been washed ashore after the tragedy were still clearly marked with the ship’s name. Members of the Court and counsel were taken to the Ministry of Works bulk store in Cornwall street to see the wreckage. Captain Eric Milroy, nautical surveyor appointed by the Marine Department to as-

semble evidence, identified the parts of the Kaitawa which had been found. He said several, doors from parts of the superstructure had been recovered intact. They included the doors from the wheelhouse and butcher’s shop, and the galley serving hatch from the crew’s messroom. Captain Milroy pointed out other wreckage including a mast with a red sail, marked 2KA, from one of the collier’s smashed life-boats. He said the buoyancy tanks from both life-boats had come ashore the day after the sinking and unlike other wreckage would have been blown high on to the beach, and remained at the spot they first struck. The tanks were found south of Scotts point on Ninety-Mile Beach. The tanks gave “a certain indication of where the ship was when they came away from it,” said Captain Milroy. Eighteen of the Kaitawa’s 32 life-jackets were piled together in the store, marked with the places at which they had been found. Captain Milroy said many were tied as though they had been worn. Some had been turned in-side-out and this could have happened when waves tore the jackets from the bodies of the men wearing them. Before inspecting the wreckage, the Court saw a 10-minute television film of the collier’s capsized hull lying in 19 fathoms of water off Cape Maria Van Diemen. Afterwards a 15-man selfinflating life-raft, of the type carried by the Kaitawa, was demonstrated at Wellington airport. At the demonstration the Court saw torn sections of rubber from one of the Kaitawa’s rafts, found washed up on the beach. Captain Milroy said knots which had been tied in tapes still attached to pieces of rubber showed the raft had been occupied after it was launched from the sinking shin. The inquiry will continue tomorrow.