Ship Deserters Jump Overboard And Are Rescued at Wellington

Grey River Argus, 22 August 1949, Page 8

Ship Deserters Jump Overboard And Are Rescued at Wellington

WELLINGTON, August 21. On Friday night two Norwegian seamen, Tom Wesenberg and Andersen Larsen, fell from the tanker Herbrand as she was passing through Wellington Heads. The harbour pilot launch, Uta, picked up the two men abreast of Barrett’s Reef. There was no indication that the ship had missed thp two men. Wesenberg told his rescuers that they deliberately jumped off the ship as they wanted to remain in New Zealand. The Herbrand left Miramar wharf at 4 p.m., but hove-to in the stream because oi engine trouble. She sailed for Sourabaya and Ababan about 7.30 p.m. Captain Suckling, the pilot, stated he was about to transfer from the Herbrand, which he had piloted out of the harbour, to the Uta, when the Hinemoa, on her way to Lyttelton, signalled the launch that a man was in the water. The Hinemoa dropped a lifebuoy, with a light attached, overboard and stopped. Captain Suckling made a search about the buoy, and found two men, a couple of hundred feet apart, near it. The men had been 20 minutes in the cold water, and were unable to say what ship they belonged to or how long they had been in the water. The Uta sent a radio message ashore and went straight to the Seatoun wharf, from which an ambulance took the two men to the Wellington Hospital. Wesenberg, whose age was given as 32, and another member of the crew, Ole Balken, had on Friday appeared before Mr Herd, S.M., on charges of absenting themselves from the Herbrand. After hearing evidence from the ship’s captain, through an interpreter, the Magistrate dismissed the charges.