STRANGE EQUITY CASE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 57, 4 September 1937, Page 8

STRANGE EQUITY CASE

A WRECK RECALLED

PRESS STORY AS EVIDENCE

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, August 27.

In the vivid words sot the sole survivor ps reported in a Sydney newspaper of iSlarch 9, 1868, the story of the wreck of the brig Fortune off the coast of New Zealand nearly 70 years ago will be told again in\ the Master-in-Equity's Court next week. The newspaper account which will be tendered is a vital part of the claim of two men nearly 80 years of age to be next-of-kin of Thomas Petley, a son of Captain William Edgar Petley, master of the Fortune.

The case, which came before the Court this week and was adjourned, will provide one of the most fascinating stories told in the Equity jurisdiction. The Perpetual Trustee Co., Ltd., as executor of the will of the late Thomas Petley (a son of Captain Petley), is asking the Court for directions whether William Edgar Petley and Frederick John Petley are next-of-kin of Thomas Petley and entitled to his £11,000 estate. It is claimed that Thomas Petley and the two defendants were brothers, but a question for the Court which affects distribution of the estate is whether Captain Petley and mVwife (formerly Mary Dwyer) were twice married to each other. It will be stated that it was not unusual for couples of different religions in New South Wales in the sixties to _be married to each other twice. V™a\£r such marriages were celebrated in the respective churches to which the PSSS is toM how Captami Petley left his home to take the Forfuneto sea and of as'interview^rs widow had three months later with Wilnam Orchard, cook of toe Fortune. nine and at about Christmas,. 1867, his fXer told him he was going on a vovaee Petley never saw him again. KLmd w.s th, only survivor .of {he wreck of that vessel. He and that; Brig Fortune. Ten Lives Lost," the extract from a Sydney newspaper of March 9, 1868, is an exhibit m the case It gives a description of the wreck by George Orchard, the sole Svor who said that he was washed ashore naked, and afterwards ■ saw the bodies of all the crew except one.