NAUTICAL ENQUIRY.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 8 October 1913, Page 5

NAUTICAL ENQUIRY.

DUNEDIN, Oct. 7. me nautical enquiry into the circumstances surrounding the loss of the ryrone near the Otago Heads on September 27, began to-day before Mi S. 1. Widdowson S.M., and two assessors, Captains Sundstrum' and Hunter Kobert Leighton, lighthouse-keeper at Taiaroa Head, and William Carter harbor watchman at Otago Heads <mve evidence as to the weather 'conditions at the time of the wreck ; Captain McLauchlan said that he did '£r i S6S uhe T. aiaroa light that night He had been in command of steamers since February, 1890, and during Ms I m years' nautical experience this was the first^ accident that he had had .Neither he nor his officers had scaled oft the course on the chart. Witness had never been deceived by fog-signals He had no complaint to make regarding the omcers. The enquiry adjourned till to-morrow \f n r t, D^NEDIN, Later. " ti j x local agent for Lloyds, to-day received a message in connection with the Tyrone, and tenders are now invited for salvage oh the basis of "no cure no pay." The conditions of the tender refer both to the vessel s 'fittings -and cargo. In connection with the taking up of the Tyrone's gunning, it is understood that the New Zealand Shipping Company's Waimate has been chartered by the' Union Company. The^Waimate will proceed to Australia, where she will load for San Francisco and Vancouver. The position of the Tyrone is said to be growing now more precarious and her list to seaward Jias increased. After being examined, Captain McLauchlan, master of the Tyrone, read a written statement, in which he admitted having made a mistake, and that that mistake, combined with a series of abnormal circumstances later on at the Heads, led iip to the catastrophe "The mistake I made," he wrote, "was that 1 measured the distance from Akaroa to the heads at 149 miles, and this not being the distance impressed on my mind by over six miles, I discovered that something was wrong. I procured ;a copy of the N.Z. Nautical Almanac, 'and^ound that the distance mentioned, 115.7 miles, was hot from Akaroa, but from Flat Point."