ROYAL TAR WRECK

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20636, 16 August 1941, Page 3

ROYAL TAR WRECK

LOSS OF SHIP RECALLED

“To tell you the truth I was on watch at the time, but in the manner of all apprentice boys I was asleep on the hatch,” said Captain T. V. Hu. at a farewell function in his honou: in Auckland, when he was joking!.'asked by Sir Ernest Davis if -he was qr. watch at the time the Roval Ta. struck Shearer Rock, Hauraki Gulf, and became a total wreck. Captain Hill, who* recently retired from the Union Steam Ship Company, was the guest of honour at a gathering of the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Company of Mariners. "The skipper of the Royal Tar marie me boatswain six months before my apprenticeship time was up. but when we got to port the owner objected,” said Captain Hill. “He would not pay me any more than apprenticeship wages, which were £1 15s a month, and so another man was made boatswain. It gave me great pleasure to tell the owner afterwards that it was the new boatswain who piled the Royal Tar up on Shearer Reck, and that if I had sti! been boatswain his ship would stib have been afloat,” concluded Captain Hill, amid laughter. The barque Royal Tar, under Cap tain Morrison, struck Shearer Rock early on the morning of November 2(i. 1901, and quickly sank in deep water She was bound from Auckland If Kaipara in baliast and was iv, insured.