Wreck of the May Queen.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume X, Issue 1840, 28 January 1888, Page 3

Wreck of the May Queen.

(PER PRESS ASSOCIATION.)

CHRISTCHUECH, January 27. The barque May Queen, which went ashore near Camp Bay, has settled down considerably in the water. At half tide the bulwarks were just clear, and as the tide rose too waves washed over the poop. A Rang ot thirty men were engaged in discharging cargo. Up to a late hour this nfternoon, three hundred and fifty tons had been got out. The sails and yards are being taken off, and the cabin nttiDgs and officers' instruments are being removed. It is thought that if a nor'-easter springs up the vessel will soon break up. The pumps have been forced up through the deok, a sure sign that her back is broken, and that the rocks have penetrated her hold. Twenty tons of powder which were on board have been saved.

DUNEDIN, January 2G. The May Queen has been abandoned to the underwriters. She is lying with her head pointing S.S.E., and is hanging on to the boulders from about the mainmast, her stern being in deep water. There is oow nine feet of water in the bold. The weather is fine and the wind is blowing fresh from the S.W.

The programme for the Maori race meeting at Kautu is published.

At a committee meeting of the Taranaki Jockey Clnb, held last night, it was decided to call for tenders for the erection of a grand stand.

The Tarannki Herald thus : "We hear too much about ' silting up of the harbor,' a most damaging report to got abroad. It is not true; and those who spread the report are no iriends to the place. It is not easy to contradict such a wild statement when it has once been put in circulation, and since Mr. Standish has uttered it again at a public meeting it will, as a two line paragraph, be made to appear in every newspaper in the world 1" Every paper in the world ! do you say, Mr. Editor ? Oh, too, too cruel 1 Mr. Standish, you might have spared us this I

It is evident that ere long, in self-pro-teotion (says the Wellington Post), the colony will have to take over the liabilities of the Taranaki Harbor Board. It cannot be permitted to repudiate or make default in its liabilities to foreign creditors. Taraaaki, however, is Dot the only harbor in difficulties, , or rapidly approaching a similar plight. The Dunedin Harbor Board, alter having spent £600,000 without producing any appreciable beneficial effect on the Otago bar, has now reached h d * d btful

its tetner an it is oubtlu whether the water-way can be kept open without constant dredging, for which the Board has no funds. At Oamaru and at

Timaru large sums cf money have been spent in attempting to make harbors to compete with the railway which runs along the coast, nnd in various other places large sums have been spent, are being 6pent, or are desiied to be spent, in hopeless efforts to improve upon Nature, in trying to moke harbors when Nature never intended them to be, and where, if mude, they would compete with railways already constructed at an enormous cost by the colony. It is high time Parliament put a summary stop to all this kind of thing, and absolutely rejected all artificial harbor schemes. The colony will have difficulty enough in meeting the liabilities already incurred by the innumerable Harbor Boards which, sooner or later, will find themselves in the position of the Taranaki and Dunedin Boards. Mr. Newton King's sales at Stratford and Stoney River are announced.