Washed Ashore From Elingamite

Northern Advocate, 9 January 1936, Page 8

Washed Ashore From Elingamite

To Revisit Lucky Spot

Three King's Disaster Recalled Thirty-four years ago one of the lifeboats from the ill-fated Elingamite was washed ashore on the beach near Houhora. Among the lucky ones on hoard was Mr F. W. Doidge, and, although the intervening years have been -rich in experience for him, this colourful episode in his life remains vivid in his memory. He is now travelling North by car to revisit the spot where the lifeboat landed. JT WAS on the foggy morning of November 9, 1902, when the Elingamite crashed into one of the Three Kings Islands. The murky atmosphere added to the great confusion, but Mr Doidge, then a lad of sixteen, was able to get away on No. 6 lifeboat. The lifeboat ■ was not long adrift when a massive' spar, washed from the Elingamite, was thrown, like a torpedo, by ! the force of the waves through the boat in which Mr Doidge was escaping. Kept Afloat-by Ladder. The lifeboat quickly sank. Mr Doidge was fortunate in being able to keep afloat on a ladder, while two seamen from the swamped lifeboat swam back to the ship, by this time almost awash. Here they scrambled into No. 2 lifeboat, which had been left on board because it could not be launched, and they were on the point of giving up all for lost when a big wave came along and did what they themselves could not do—freed# the lifeboat. 4 Fortunately, it did not capsize, and, within a short time, Mr Doidge and most of the others' who had been in the wrecked lifeboat, were picked up.

Two Days Adrift. However, their troubles were only beginning, and for two 'days they drifted, not knowing whither, ■ until they were washed ashore near Houhora. Others from the wrecked Eligamite were not so fortunate. One lifeboat, with 50 people aboard, disappeared into the fog, never to be heard of again. A raft upon which sixteen people left the doomed ship was buffeted by the sea for eight days before being found by the man-o’-war Penguin, there then being only eight survivors. As" a young man Mr Doidge entered'journalism and was a member of the staff of the “Auckland Star” when the Great War commenced. He was among the first to enlist and served in France where he was wounded. Retained in England. Lord Beaverbrook threw his home open for the reception of convalescent officers from the Dominions, land it was thus that Mr Doidge first made contact with this great newspaper personality. His work' so impressed Lord Beaverbrook that he was retained in England after the war apd was for some years manager of one of the leading papers in Fleet Street. In 1935 Mr Doidge returned to New Zealand and put up a determined fight for the Rotorua seat during the last election, polling very well indeed in a quadrangular contest. With Mrs Doidge, he passed through Whangarei yesterday en route for Kerikeri. From there they will motor on to Houhora.