ESTATE CLAIMED

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 11 September 1937, Page 6

ESTATE CLAIMED

DISPOSAL or £ 11,00(1 WRECK OF BRIG FORTUNE SYDNEY, 2nd September. In the vivid records of the sole survivor, as reported in a Sydney newspaper of 9th March, 18(18, the story of the wreck of the brig Fortune oil' the coast of New Zealand nearly 70 years ago will be told again in the Master-in-Equity's Court. The newspaper account, which will be tendered, is a vital part of the claim of two men nearly 80 years of age to be next of kin of Thomas Petley, a sou of Captain William Edgar Petley, master of the Fortune.

The case, which came before the Court and was adjourned* will provide one of the most fascinating stories told in the Equity jurisdiction. The Perpetual Trustee Company, Limited, as executor of the will of the late Thomas Petley (a son of Captain Petley) is asking the Court for directions whether William Edgar Petley and Frederick John Petley arc next of kin of Thomas Petley and entitled to his £II,OOO estate.

QUESTION FOR COURT It is claimed that Thomas Petley and the two defendants were brothers, but a question for the Court which afi'ects distribution of the estate is whether Captain Petley and his wife, formerly Mary Dwyer, were twice married to each other. It will be stated that it was not unusual for couples of different religions in New South Wales in the “sixties" to be married to each other twice. Usually such marriages were celebrated in the respective Churches to which the parties belonged. In affidavits it is told how Captain Petley left his home to take the Fortune to sea, and of an interview his widow had three months later with William Orchard, cook of the Fortune, the sole survivor of the wreck. Present at that interview was William Edgar Petley, a son, who was then nine, and now is 78. BOYHOOD MEMORIES In his affidavit William Edgar Pet-

lev said that he last saw his father in IliiiT. When Policy was aged nine, and at about Christmas, 1 BUT, his father told him lie was going on a voyage. Petley never saw him again. Two or three months later his mother was distressed and wore mourning "She told me that my father was dead, and that his ship had sunk on the coast of New Zealand,” Pctlcy’s affidavit adds.

"Afterwards she took me to the , olliee of a Captain Pock ley in Syd- • ney, where she had a conversation , with a man. I remember that man , say , : lie had been the cook of the iFoi t c. and was the only survivor 'of the wreck of that vessel. He said I that my father had been drowned." I Under the headings, “Wreck of the | Brig Fortune. Ton Lives Lost,” the extract from a Sydney newspaper of 9th March, 18(58, is an exhibit in the case. It gives a description of the wreck by George Orchard, the sole survivor. who said that he was washed ashore naked, and afterw„rds saw the bodies of all the crew except one.