MISSING LINER. SPECIAL STEAMER TO SEARCH.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 60, 8 September 1909, Page 7

MISSING LINER. SPECIAL STEAMER TO SEARCH.

TO LEAVE CAPETOWN TO-MORROW. A COURSE SKETCHED OUT. By Telegraph.— Press Association.— Copyright. (Received September 8, 9 a.m.) LONDON, 7th September. In connection with the arrangements for a joint search for the missing liner Waratah, the underwriters have Bubscribed £200t), the owners £1000, and the Protection and Indemnity Club £300. Arrangements are almost completed to send the Union-Caetle Company's Sabine in quest of the missing steamer. She will Sfearch first the current from Cape 'AgulhaG towards Kerguelen Island. The Sabine will probably-Bail on Thursday. The Sabine is a steel screw steamer of 3805 tonß, built in 1895 by Harland and Wolff, Ltd., of Belfast, for the UnionCastle Mail line. She is commanded by Captain S. H. Owen. . NO TRACE. (Received September 8, 10.20 a.m.) PERTH, This Day. The steamer Earoola has arrived here from Durban. On the voyage across 6he kept as far south as latitude 42deg., but saw no trace of the Waratah.

Aa optimistic view is taken of the Waratah's prospects by Mr. G. S. Richardson, a marine engineer, who was a passenger by the misßing liner from Australia to Durban. Mr. Richardson, who is in Natal officially on behalf of one of the Australian Governments, was conducted over the engine-room and the entire machinery of the steamer- by her chief engineer during the voyage, and he spoke of her mechanical equipment as being first-class in every respect. Questioned by a representative of the Natal Mercury , with regard to the conjecture expressed by Captain- Kerr, of the White Star liner Runic, the other day, that the Waratah's main steam pipe might have burst, and temporarily disabled her, Mr. Richardson stated it was his impression, though lie would not be sure, that each of the steamer's engines was provided with an independent Eteam main, and that therefore the chances of both engines being put out of action through pipe rupture— unless it occurred in the vicinity of the principal eteam outlet from the boilers— were very remote. As to the form of mischance which has befallen the Waratah, the opinion to which Mr. Richardson inclines is that her propellers are the cause of the steamer's disablement. Assuming that she broke or lost one of these, it is quite conceivable, Mr. Richardson thinks, that the other has gone also, for in heavy weather such a strain would have been placed upon the remaining sound propeller that it waa very likely unequal to the demand placed upon its strength, and either collapsed itself, or fractured the tail shaft. Mr. Richardso* explains his theory by pointing out that the steamer's 40 feet of superstructure would act under the circumstances of propeller disablement as a huge square sail, tending to throw the steamer off her course, and therefore placing an abnormal stress upon the one propeller, with which it was being endeavoured >to drive the steamer along. Thus Mr. Richardson thinks it a probable solution of the steamer's absence that she is without means of propulsion at all, and is completely at the mercy of wind and current. He is not sanguine -as to the possibility of repairing any injury to the propellers while the steamer is at sea, the Waratah being such a large vessel, and her propellers being of such a size — 18ft in diameter — and though, of course, she carried spare ones, he is doubtful about euch an operation being attempted.