Reunited at last...

Press, 18 February 1986, Page 1

Reunited at last...

By

SIMON LOUISSON

in Wellington

An utterly distraught Mrs Lorna McLean was reunited with her husband, John, at 3.25 p.m. after 16 hours of uncertainty for the Australian couple.

Mr McLean, a former seaman, was probably the only passenger to have fallen overboard during the rescue from the Mikhail Lermontov. This is the third shipwreck he has survived.

He was flown by helicopter from Picton, arriving in Wellington almost eight hours after the other passengers had been cleared off the Arahura.

Mrs McLean, escorted by two Salvation Army officers, was taken to Wellington Airport in a police car. She had to wait a few moments, while the helicopter wound down — and then

she was in the arms of her husband. The tension from the hours of waiting was released in a flood of tears and emotion as the couple embraced.

Earlier in the day, Mrs McLean was so upset about her husband that she refused to register with the police until 11.30 a.m.

Asked how long he had been in the water, Mr McLean said, “I don’t know. It was a long time.”

He estimated that he spent two hours in the water, but others suggested it may have been less.

Soon after being reunited, the couple were whisked to the airport police station where Mr McLean was quickly “processed,” and then they were taken to a Wellington hotel.

The Wellington police said Mr McLean was the

only passenger from the Mikhail Lermontov to have landed in the South Island. Some confusion surrounds the events after he was swept from a liferaft, but by his account he was dragged from the sea after grabbing a lifebuoy thrown from the naval vessel Taupo. He was then transferred to a police launch which was towing lifeboats back to Picton. The police said that Mrs McLean’s long wait was just one of the com-

munication problems they had to deal with. Mr McLean had his ship sink beneath him twice in his career as a merchant seaman. The first time was in 1940 when he was aboard the Union Steam Ship Company’s vessel Niagara when she hit a mine just out of Auckland and sank in two hours. The second was aboard the Union Company vessel Wanaka when she sank in a cyclone off Queensland in 1943.

Further reports, pages 3 and 4, pictures, pages 3,4, 5, 36.