Launch Presumed To Be Lost

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31762, 20 August 1968, Page 24

Launch Presumed To Be Lost

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, August 19.

The relatives of the skipper and crew members of the 54ft motor launch the Lady Lesa—last seen by the lighthouse keeper at Cape Reinga on June I—say they “can only presume they are lost.”

Mrs R. G. Steven, a niece of the skipper of the Lady Lesa, Mr Roy Lidgard, said: “We reported the launch’s disappearance to the air-sea rescue people and we have waited and waited, but there’s been no word at all of the launch’s whereabouts." The Lady Lesa left Kawau Island on May 25 bound for New Caledonia to salvage cargo from a 398-ton islands trader, the Matipo. On board the launch were three generations of the Lidgard family—Mr Roy Lidgard, aged 74, Mr Jim Lidgard, aged 46, and Mr Geoff Lidgard, aged 23, and also Mr | Louis J. Fraser, aged 22. 1 Mr Fraser’s father, Mr L. F.

Fraser, of King Edward Avenue, Bayswater, said today that when the Lady Lesa first left Kawau Island she was towing a small yacht. The launch returned to the island because the yacht was too heavy. The Lidgards’ Insurance company has on its files that its clients are “lost.” Mr Steven, who is now living in the house once occupied by Mr Roy Lidgard, said: “We presume they are lost.” Mr Roy Lidgard was a veteran Auckland boatbuilder and yachtsman. He closed his business in 1959 after 30 years of boatbuilding. Mr Lidgard has cruised extensively in the South Pacific.