HIGH PRAISE FOR CAPTAIN

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 7, 9 January 1930, Page 10

HIGH PRAISE FOR CAPTAIN

DUNEDIN, This Day. The Manuka inquiry was resumed this morning, when the evidence of passengers was taken. Franklin Wood Duncan said that he did not take much notice of the visibility, but when in tho lifeboat the rowers had to pull hard all night against the current to keep the boat offshore. There were six men rowing. When the morning came they were only some three hundred yards from the Manuka. He thought that all the passengers would agree that it was due not to luck, but to the skill of the captain that they were alive to-day. The captain did all that any man could to save the passengers and crew. ■ Patrick Herbert, an ex-chief detective, stated that when he camo on deck he saw what looked like a thick black mass of oil smoke, which he now realised was land. In the lifeboat the visibility seemed good. Witness paid a warm tribute to the conduct of th- stewards, but complained that the Union Company might have sent a small boat to collect the passengers' valuables. Tho Magistrate said that that was quite outside tho inquiry's scope. "MOST MARVELLOUS THING." Wyrley Birch, actor, of JS'ew York, said that after the ship struck he looked over the side and saw what he thought were very black clouds. Afterwards, when the fog cleared, he saw it was the land. He left the Manuka in the last boat. The rocks were more visible then. The fog over tho land was intermittent and cloud-like. The

current to the westerly was strong, and they liad all they could do to keep offshore. The work of to officers and crew for the safety of tho passengers was tho most marvellous thing ho had ever seen. Everything was handled with superb coolness and calm.

Reginal< Robert^, actor, said that after the Manuka struck he could see about fifty feot of cliff. Thick grey fog obscured the rest. From about the height of tho ship's bridge it would not be possible to see the headland from a quarter of a mile away while the fog was on, but from the bow of the boat one would probably see the cliff-as one got on to it. Richard Galbraith, civil engineer, said that after his boat left the ship they rowed away from it, and then rested on tho oars. Tho boat drifted inshore and ahead' of the wreck. Roy Stanley, principal lighthousekeeper at Nugget Point, said there was a thick fog there on the night of the mishap, and the visibility was only a hundred yards. Fishermen had told him that in easterly weather they could not fish off Long Point owing to an inshore set. Mr. Hanlon asked what charge he was supposed to meet. Mr. Adams .replied that he could make a charge in accordance with the questions asked at the beginning of the inquiry. . STRONG INSHORE SET. Captain Corby, of the steamer Kaiwarra, who went to the Manuka's assistance, said that on the trip down he found himself from a mile to a mile and a half inside his set course, and on the return trip found himself, in a run of forty-two miles, five miles inside his course. He could only attribute that to a strong in-shorc set. Captain M'Lean, harbourmaster at Dunedin, said he went to the wreck in tho tug Dunedin. He set a course for a mile off the Nuggets. Had he continued he would have finished in the bay to tho north of the Nuggets. After leaving Long Point on the return, in a run of two miles the tug was set in-shore half a mile. He then set a course outside. He did not feel the current so much after passing Cosgrove Island.