DROWNING FATALITY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 76, 25 February 1930, Page 7

DROWNING FATALITY.

PUNT SAVAMPED ON RIVER

CHRISTCHURCH, Feb. 24. Two men were drowned while on a trawling expedition in the Waimakariri River during the north-west gale which raged last night. The tragedy occurred at 9.30 p.m. a few hundred yards below Kairaki. The deceased are:—John McLenaghan, aged 57, a married man, living at 14 Somerfield Street Spreydon, and Mr Hurtle Fisher, aged 37, also married, living at 371 River Road, Richmond. Messrs McLenaghan and Fisher, who were fully clothed and clad in gumboots, had finished fishing and started out/ from the Kairaki shore for Brooklands in a sheet iron punt. Owing to the gale the water was very rough and the punt sank. In a second boat were Messrs Claude George Smart, a commercial traveller; James Basset, a departmental manager, and John Douglas McLenaghan, a eon of John McLenaghan. They were in a wooden nunt and managed to struggle ashore with their boat half full of water. They bailed out the boat and went at once to look for their companions, but were unsuccessful in locating either the men or their gear. This morning the police from Belfact and Kaiapoi searched the river and found the boat and the net used by the two men. The river at the point where the fatality occurred is very wide and is filled with snags so that it will be a difficult matter to drag for the bodies.