AN EPIC OF THE OCEAN.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXIV, Issue 279, 3 December 1907, Page 4

AN EPIC OF THE OCEAN.

The story of the wreck of the Dundonald and the experiences of the survivors which we gave yesterday morning is a veritable epic of the sea. Whether we owe something to the dramatic quality of Charles Eyre's narrative or to Mr,Crosby Smith's translation of it, the fact remains that the story is told with all the simple force of a great literary work fit to rank among our classic tales of the sea. There is pathos in the sndden disappearance of the captain and his son; the loss over the cliffs of the man who had just got ashore from the maelstrom as he was about to succour his mates; the death of that mate of three score whpse heart broke when, he found that the island to which he had got his men was not that of the depot. And then the wonderful making of canvas boats and their navigation. It has been aptly compared to Defoe. Evidently the youthful Eyre is a character to be commended. His courage is patent from the narrative however modestly told, and his humorous description of his eight months , sojourn as "the life of a gentleman hunting big game" suggests the happy-go-lucky young sea dog of the type that Drake would have valued. The final pathos of that funeral service over a body in a sea trunk and the lonely grave over which the Molly Hawk soreech in the eerie night recalls Poe, or one of Lafcadio Hearn's Japanese legends. The tragedy has quite overshadowed the scientific and its results, which were evidently valuable, but of them we will hear more anon. The effort to bring wingless ducks and other Auckland Island birds to Kapiti, is not the least interesting feature of it.