Third Bid To Salvage Trawler

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31197, 22 October 1966, Page 1

Third Bid To Salvage Trawler

A third attempt to get the 50ft fishing trawler Rosalind to her home port, Lyttelton, from the shingle bank at the Hurunui rivermouth probably will be made about 6 a.m. today.

The Rosalind, valued at £lB,OOO, was beached on the shingle bank on September 20. She had drifted from off the Lyttelton Heads for six hours after her engine was disabled by fire. Her crew came ashore on a life-raft just before she hit the bank.

During the next three days, two Lyttelton trawlers attempted to tow her off the bank at high tide. Heavy seas moved the Rosalind further up the bank, and further south from the mouth of the river.

The Rosalind was then offered for sale by tender by the insurance underwriters, and Ryan Bros., a Christchurch contracting firm, won the tender.

On September 28, after two days and a night of repair work and bulldozing a basin round the Rosalind, the firm refloated her, but she sank in about 30ft of water 100 yards off the bank.

Three days later, the Rosalind was winched back on to the bank after a skindiver had put a line round her hull. In the last two days, a new rudder has been fitted to the trawler, her engine taken down, cleaned and run again, and the propeller shaft inspected. Planks which had sprung have been tied with steel rods. The outside of the hull has been “stuccoed”—two coats of cement plastered over wirenetting fastened to the hull from keelson to belting.

A slipway on which to launch the ship has been constructed with about 300 ft of railway line, and the Rosalind has been nudged on to two A

bogies, which will enable her to be eased down the slip to well below the high-water mark.

Last evening, all was ready to get the trawler off the bank with the least possible strain on her hull. Given northerly, or north-west conditions the Rosalind may drift out to sea. Two Lyttelton trawlers, skippered by the Brassell brothers, will be standing-by off the bank. They will escort the Rosalind back to Lyttelton, but it is hoped that she will be able to make port under her own power.

The attempt will be made on the first occasion sea, wind and tide conditions are judged favourable.