TRUE FISH STORY

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 48, Issue 2922, 30 June 1939, Page 7

TRUE FISH STORY

SCHOONER’S HULL PIERCED

ATTACKED BY SWORDFISH

FOIURTEEIN IN'CHSS THROUGH

This sounds like a fish story and Captain J. R. Handley, master of the auxiliary schooner Mauno, admits it.

Twelve years ago, the Mauno, anchored in the Gilbert Islands, shuddered, and her captain and crew thought that either she had struck a pinnacle rock or that there had been an earth tremor. A few weeks ago, when the schooner was being broken up, it was discovered that the sword of a swordfish had penetrated fourteen inches of planking at an angle, and was still buried in the timbers. Along with his letter to Burns, Philp and Co., Ltd., in Sydney, admitting the “fish story’’ sound of the report, Captain Handley produces his evidence by parcels post—lB inches of sword, broken into three pieces in getting] it out of the schooner, and five inches in circumference at the thicker end. The pieces have been wired together. The Mauno, a wooden vessel, was built in Sydney, and was owned by Burns, Philp (South Seas) Co., Ltd. Captain Handley, who commanded the schooner, and saw her broken up, vouches for the facts in his letter, written from Tarawa. “One night in 1927, the Mauno was at anchor off South-West Point, outside, at Apaiang,” he wrote. “During the evening we felt a sharp vibration by the vessel. At first I thought we had touched a pinnacle rock, but later we concluded that there had been an earth tremor. So it passed off at that.

“But the following, day the ship was leaking, and we found that one of the timbers was welling up. Our native diver went down to examine, and found about eight inches. of sword projecting out of the third strake up from the keel. That was cut away and the cleft closed up.’’

When the Mauno was sent in to be broken up at Tarawa, it was found that the sw®rd had penetrated sheathing', 2i inch planking, and then 5 inch timber adjoining, at an angle, so that the 18 inches remaining were completely hidden in the timbers. “From my own knowledge of this species of fish, the monster that attacked us must have been at least 20 feet long, with a sword 3 feet long, tapering to half an inch,” the letter adds. “The Mauno must have appeared as a whale to it, and, to pierce such timber, it must have come at us with terrific force. I recall a Canadian vessel going into Valparaiso 50 years ag'o, leaking, after being attacked by a swordfish. 1