MISHAP TO TUG

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 23 August 1935, Page 5

MISHAP TO TUG

HOLED ON PATENT SLIP WATER POURS BELOW DECKS LIFTED BY FLOATING CRANE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, Aug. 22. One of the strangest nautical mishaps that has ever happened in Port Nicholson befell the Union Steamship Company’s harbour fug Natone this morning. She was being hauled up on to the patent slip in Evans Bay, when apparently, without warning, she heeled over on -the cradle and came to rest at a precarious angle on her port side, shipping a. quantity of water. The tug, which is well known on the harbour, is a small wooden vessel 86 feet long and of shallow draught. Preparations were made this morning for slipping her for annual cleaning and painting. The weather was almost perfect, with a slight off-shore breeze, and the tide almost at the full, when the smaller cradle on the western side of the slip was run down and the boat manoeuvred into position upon it. Then was commenced the pull shorewards, two stout metal cables taking the strain from the power house to the cradle. The pulling had not been long in progress, when the tug slowly and gently heeled over towards the western and nearest jetty. She has little freeboard, and the sea was soon pouring below the decks, while about half a dozen men on board made a hasty scramble for the starboard rail, which was 'high in the air. The hauling was immediately' stopped. Captain V. G. Webb, marine superintendent for the Union Company, said the accident was due 'to one of the blocks which keep the hujj on the cradle coming adrift. Shortly after 1 o’clock the Wellington Harbour Board’s floating crane Hikitia arrived and moored against the dolphin on the opposite side of the jetty' to the tug. With the assistance of a diver, who had been under water intermittently' for three hours," two steel wire hawsers were fixed beneath the hull of the Natone fore and aft of the superstructure on the port side! The Hikitia commenced to haul just after 2 o’clock, and only a few minutes were required to bring the tug’s deck: clear of the water. As the crane took the strain the forward hawser crushed the bulwarks for a third of the ship’s length, and carried away a mast stay. Men on the opposite jetty pulled away the chocks on the starboard side, and the vessel righted herself to reveal a gaping hole on the port side amidships and just below the water line. It was approximately four feet square and had been caused by the boat rolling on to the loosened chock which had let her down. The Natone was then hauled on to the slip.