FISHING BOAT WRECKED

Grey River Argus, 1 August 1934, Page 5

FISHING BOAT WRECKED

MAN’S CLOSE CALL

On Great Barrier

(Per Press Association.)

AUCKLAND, July 31

Three weeks ago the fishing boat. Lindores left Auckland for a fishing expedition in Hauraki Gulf. Now the vessel is a battered wreck on the rocks in Tryphena Bay, Great Barrier Island. It is the relic of a drama in which two fishermen, in their first commercial enterprise, met disaster, and in which one of them almost lost his life.

Thc fishermen were Alexander Leslie, aged 29, owner of the vessel; and Edward Turner, aged 17. On Wednesday last, with her crankshaft broken, the Lindores anchored in the Bay, and on Thursday night preparations were made for catching crayfish on a reef which runs out from Tryphena Point. In thc early hours of Friday morning, the wind, which had been blowing strongly from the north, veered to the east, and the boat began to drag her anchor. With the engine out of commission, thc fishermen had to set their sails, but with heavy seas battering the craft and the weather getting steadily worse, the efforts to raise the anchor were fruitless. The anchor line had to be cast overboard.

The boat then began to drift toward the rocks. Four desperate attempts were made to swing the boat round, but each time the craft niisstayed. Now at the mercy of tho seas, the Lindores crashed against, the rocks, and a huge wave carried Turner overboard. Fortunately, he grasped the main sheet as he went over, and, before thc boat crashed against thc rocks again, his companion dragged him back. Then, caught in the maw of a huge swell, the vessel was thrown against the wall of rocks which were part of an approach, two chains in length, which has been built for a new wharf. The fishermen had just time to scramble on to the wall before their boaf foundered. The Lindores was thirty-two feet long, with a beam of eight feet.