TRAWLER SET ADRIFT

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31158, 7 September 1966, Page 1

TRAWLER SET ADRIFT

Mooring lines were slipped on several trawlers and on two dredges in the inner harbour at Lyttelton on Monday night. One of the trawlers, the 50ft Antares, worth about £lB,OOO, was set adrift. In the last two months, trawling nets have been set on fire and £5OO worth of damage done to the engine of the trawler Kotuku by a person who put coal dust down the air intake. Police have been making extra patrols of the wharves, and the Harbour Board’s staff have also been alerted. Mrs Hedgecock, wife of Mr A. Hedgecock, president of the Lyttelton Fishermen’s Association, said she was

drawing the bedroom curtains at her home at 18 Randolph terrace when saw that the Antares was drifting away from the boat jetty.

Mr Hedgecock and Mr D. Fitzgerald, skipper of the Antares, went out in a Harbour Board dinghy and brought the drifting trawler back to her berth. Mrs Hedgecock said that the two men had difficulty in getting the Antares back, and did not get home until 1 a.m.

The men found that the mooring lines on the 70ft trawler Snowlyne, valued about £40,000, which was tide up near the Antares, had also been slipped. However, a spring which held the Snowlyne in her berth had been overlooked.

“It was only by the grace of God she was hanging on at all,” Mrs Hedgecock said. “There was very little wind

at the time. The tide was going out.” Mr J. S. Rooney, managing director of Fish Processing, Ltd., which owns the Snowlyne,- said it looked like the work of delinquents. “If the Antares had floated out to the outer harbour she could have gone on the rocks,” said Mr I. E. Smith, manager of United Fisheries, Ltd., which owns the trawler. "The Antares adrift in the outer harbour would have been a danger to other shipping, too,” he added. The Harbourmaster (Captain A. R. Champion) said that a few lines had been thrown off various ships round the harbour. “We have a lot of difficulty tracing these people. It is just vandalism. It has happened many, many times over the years.”