STRANGE TALE OF SEA

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9825, 23 November 1917, Page 3

STRANGE TALE OF SEA

LONG ARM OF COINCIDENCE bottle from wrecked vessel MAKES A CIRCUIT. A strange ta-lo of the sea* was told by Mr G. AU'port (Secretary to the Marine Department to a. “Times” reporter yesterday. Tho auxiliary schooner Strathcona, 150 tons net burden, belonging to the dian, Australian, and New Zealand Governments and vested in the Pacific, Cable Board, was built on tho Great Barrier Island, Auckland, in 1914. She left Auckland on what proved to be her last voyage on June 4th, 1915, and all went well till, on Juno 10th, she was wrecked on the North Minerva Reef, off Fiji, all hands, fortunately, being saved. “On the 7th inst.,” said Mr Allport, “a message from tho wrecked Strathcona was found in a bottle on the beach at Wihangapoua Bay, on the north-east side of the Groat Barrier, by Michel Hants, of the scow Kohai. The message is a more genu-ine-looking thing than wo generally get in those messages from the sea; and it is a peculiar fact that the news of the lost Strathcona should travel in a bottle from the North Minerva Reef, the place whore she was wrecked, almost to the place where she was launched.” The message, which is written on a foolscap envelope, on which is printed tho address of tho Pacific Cable Board, Queen Anne’s Chambers, Tothill street, Westminster. London, S.W., reads as follows: “July 10-th, 19X5, 7.30 p.-m., H.M. schooner Strathcona wrecked on North Minerva Reef—lat. 23.38 S., long. 178.52 W. All hands saved and in the boats anchored in the lagoon, provisioned for one month, waiting first chance of weather ito sail for Suva via Low Island. Weather now moderating.—i Wm. Robertson (master). Gillies avenue, Epsom, Auckland. June 20th, 1915.”

The first date, “July 10th, 1915,” is very evidently a slip for “June 10th, 1915”; and the second date, “June 20th,” probably was the date on which the boats sailed for Suva and the bottle was committed to tho deep, to be found on tho Great Barrier Island, where the Strathcona was launched, more than two years after tho date on which she sot out on her fourdays’ run to the spot where she met her fate. Once more “the long arm of coincidence” has come into play, and once again truth has proved to be stranger than fiction.