A DISASTROUS VOYAGE.

Northern Advocate, 21 February 1911, Page 3

A DISASTROUS VOYAGE.

After many adventures in the Chine seas and West Indies, Captain Sinclair arrived at Melbourne in 1864, and bade bood-bye to sailing ships. He loved the life well enough, but wanted to get into steam for a change. This he succeeded in doing, joining as second mate the steamship Gothenburg, cwned by McMeekan, Blackwood and Co., when they took over the Melbourne firm's fleet of steamers.

After four years or so in the Gothenburg—this steamer was afterwardq wrecked with a great loss of life on the Great Barrier Reef in Torres Straits—Sinclair became chief officer of the s.s. Claude Hamilton, trading Lorn Melbourne to New Zealand. This was in 1868 or 1869. On one voyage the ship had a particularly narrow escape. After clearing Bass Strait for Hokitika, the Claude Hamilton ran into a very heavy gale. It grew worse, and at midnight the weather was appalling. This is how Sinclair subsequently described, in writing, the event (hat followed: —

"We were carrying reefed top-sails, and reefed fore-in-aft sails, and steering so as to bring the steamer beam on to the sea. This is always a bad position in heavy weather. I had been twice to the captain telling him the state of the weather —which, by the t way, he could of course see for himself by taking a look out through his c.cor. On the last occasion I suggested that we do something to ease the ship, but he made no response. I had only just got on to the bridge deck when we were hit broadside on by a ter-? r'ble sea, which covered the whole of Ihe after-part of the ship. The afterpart of the ship seemed to have entirely disappeared, but as the vessel rose again the wreckage was a sighti to behold. The weather bulwarks were gone, and the skylights had been swept clean off the decks, along with the captain's house. The captain must have been killed on the spot. The saloon was getting swamped thorugh the holes left in the deck."

Here was an emergency to try Sinclair's seamanship, and he was equal to it. He instantly set the crew to get up old canvas and spare sails, and c. quantity of boards, and with these he covered in the perilously gaping holes in the deck. The tremendous soa had swept away the steering compass, and with the captain's room went the chronometers and all the charts. Sinclair was left with only one spare compass-card, which he rigged op with a beer case as the binnaclestand. Next day the steamer ran into better weather, and in the afternoon the Otago, a celebrated steamer of those days, under the command of the well-known Captain, Jack McLean, was spoken, and the accident reported. The Claude Hamilton reached Hokitika safely and afterwards came on to Nelson and Wellington for temporary repairs.