DROWNING ACCIDENT

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 155, 27 March 1926, Page 10

DROWNING ACCIDENT

TWO LIVES LOST ONE A WOULD-BE . RESCUER I “Dominion” Special. Wanganui, March 26. Two men were drowned in the Wanganui River at midday to-day, and a third had a narrow escape. One of the deceased was a young man of 19 named William Hamilton, who lived at: No. 8 -'' Herald Street, Newtown, Wellington, but the identity of the other is unknown. At about 12.30 a man was seen to jump into the river from the Town Bridge. Three men dived in to his asgistance, one of them being Hamilton, who was a member of the crew of the steamer Invercargill. He .had plunged in from the bow of his ship, which, was berthed nearest the bridge. Hamilton swam out into the stream, but a strong ebb tide carried him down the river. When he had drifted opposite the steamer Ngatiawa he appealed for help, and just as several members of the ■ ' crew of that steamer were about to throw a rope he sank, and did not regain the surface. By this time Captain Wilkinson, of the Invercargill, had got the ship’s small boat into commission. ■ Meanwhile Norman Rowe, one of the other men, who dived in, had reached the man who jumped from the bridge, and who was then floating face downwards. As Rowe secured hold of him the drowning man sank. Rowe, in an exhausted condition, was picked up by a boat, opposite the Hotel Braeburn. He was taken to the hospital, but is now showing signs of making a good recovery. . The police have been dragging the .. river, but no trace of the bodies has yet been found. Operations have been ’.suspended until the morning. Hamilton joined the Invercargill last December and was to be rated an ordinary seaman in June. The Invercargill flew the New Zealand Ensign at half- ■ mast in memory of his plucky action. Rowe is a watersider, a married man •with one child, and resides at Castle---cliff. It is surmised that the man who jumped off the bridge is a well-known resident, who was seen in the vicinity shortly before the tragedy occurred. -L-, ■ Later. The identity of the man who made the tragic leap from the bridge is not de- - finitely established, but the police be- ■ lieve him to be Alexander Mitchell, a horse trainer, who is missing, "'and whose sons are assisting in the search for the body. Mitchell was recently . concerned in , the Demure case, in which he claimed over £2OOO damages for alleged breach Cr contract in connection with the lease of the racing filly Demure., His case failed. Before noon yesterday Mitchell approached a man named Young at the city end of the bridge, asking him for a piece of lead and a rope. Young asked what he wanted it for, and Mitchell said: “To catch a colt.” Young complied with the request, and Mitchell, saving “I’ll fix it,” departed across the bridge. Shortly afterwards . a man, assumed to be Mitchell, climbed the parapet of the foot-bridge, which runs beside the traffic. bridge, and jumped 25 feet into the river. .'■'The deceased, William Thomas Walter Hamilton, had been only, a few months on the Invercargill. His mother resides at No. 8 Herald Street, Newtown.