SEA MYSTERY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22353, 26 February 1936, Page 12

SEA MYSTERY

FLOATING WBECKAGE | OBJECT SEEN OFF COAST VESSEL OR STORM DEBRIS MANY THEORIES ADVANCED [by telegraph—OWN correspondent] KAITAIA, Tuesday Mystery surrounds the identity of an object which has been seen off the coast near Whangape Heads, north of Hokianga, during the past two days, and has been variously described as a wrecked launch or larger craft, and a collection of wreckage washed out to sea by the storm at (ne beginning of the month. The object was seen by a party of four Maoris from Whangape who were fishing off the rocks just north of the entrance to Whangape Harbour yesterday afternoon. One of the party. Puku Ngawaka, said that at about 2.30 p.m. he saw what appeared to bo a brown-painted launch about one and a-half miles from the shore. It was right side up and a good deal of wreckage was floating about it. Maoris Gather on Beach Practically all the male population of the Whangape Maori settlement, numbering about 30, left th?s morning for the ocean beach, five miles away, in the hope of finding salvage from the wreck. Mr. J. Geddes, a European farmer at Whangape, who accompanied the Maoris, said this evening that from a point on the coast he saw the wreckage about a mile north of the Whangape Heads. It appeared to be a boat about 60 to 70 feet in length by 15ft. in beam. It was very low in the water and could only be seen at intervals from the beach when it rose on the swell. The object seemed either to be an overturned boat with her back broken, or a vessel floating right side up with her bow and stern higher than the midships portion. Round the vessel there appeared to be spars, sails and a quantity of sawn timber. There was rather a heavy swell running, with a light wind from the south-west, and tne wreckage was drifting slowly north along the coast. It was not possible to go out near it. A Different Story A different story was told this evening by Pomare Ngawaka, a Maori from the Whangape settlement, who said he was on the beach to-day two miles north of the heads, when the wreckage had drifted quite close to the shore. It seemed to him to be a number of trees and part of a road bridge, with other rubbish tangled into a mass of about the same dimensions as described by Mr. Geddes. As the object is drifting north, the Maoris at Waikare and Ahipara will be on the look out to-morrow, and a number of the Whangape natives will also go out to the coast again. Many theories regarding the object were expounded to-day. No vessels are known to be missing on the northern coast, but one suggestion is that the wreckage is from the launch Mokau lost at sea off New Plymouth in the storm of a fortnight ago.