BUFFETED IN ATLANTIC.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20520, 22 March 1930, Page 13

BUFFETED IN ATLANTIC.

WINTON'S STORMY TRIP. A very severe buffeting in the Atlantic in January was received by the motorship Winton, which reached Auckland from Antwerp, via New York, on Thursday afternoon.

The vessel loaded basic slag at Antwerp for New Plymouth before going to New York to fill up with genera", cargo for New Zealand and Australia. She sailed from Antwerp on January 3, and encountered a westerly gale shortly after leaving port. The storm increased each day until January 14, when the wind almost reached hurricane force. Mountainous seas caused the Winton to labour heavily, and to ship water fore and aft. Tho vessel was only partly loaded with a heavy-weight cargo of slag, and tho pounding she received strained the hull and caused it to leak badly. The violent lurching of the ship threw one of the apprentices from tho bridge to the boat-deck, a distance of about 20ft., but he was not injured. Other members of the crew narrowly escaped serious injury early in the morning of January 15, when the tempest tore the tarpaulin cover from No. 1 hatch. The men were engaged in recovering the hatch when a heavy sea filled the deck and nearly washed them overboard. One man was washed through the rail, but clung to a stanchion until he was hauled to safety.

At New York the Winton was in dock for five days undergoing repairs, which consisted mostly of tightening rivets in the hull where the straio during the tempest had been most severe. The remainder of the voyage was uneventful, generally fine weather prevailing on the passage from Panama to Auckland.