LUCKY FRIGATE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27259, 9 December 1949, Page 4

LUCKY FRIGATE

CALM WEATHER EXPERIENCED

VISIT TO STORM-SWEPT ISLAND

WELLINGTON, Dec. 8.

The ship's company of the frigate HMNZS Tutira, which reached Wellington yesterday from far south weather stations, consider they sail in a lucky ship. So far as they know, it is the only vessel to have called at stormswept Macquarie Island, 1000 miles' south of Wellington, in calm weather. “We had to make 10 boat landings to get stores ashore,” said the ship’s officers. “Apart from heavy going through kelp, which lies off a shingle beach, we had little trouble. “ The beach is usually lashed by heavy surf, and gales which reached 100 miles an hour battered the last ship to call there. She was an Australian Navy tank-landing ship, which lay off the island for days awaiting a landing. “ For us." said the officers. “ the major obstacle ashore was the sea elephants. These huge creatures lay all over the beach, and we had to pick a pathway through them.” A recent census of the wild life population had shown that there were 48,000 sea elephants on the island. They congregated in huge herds on the island's few beaches. Besides these massive mammals, the weather station crew of seven had 1,000,000 penguins to keep them comoany. These were subjects for research by scientists who accompanied the Tutira. Before landing five tons of stores and Christmas mail at Macquarie Island, the Tutira called at Campbell Island, which is slightly farther south. “ The New Zealand weather men were •glad to see us, the first ship in five months,” said the Tutira's navigating officer. “We brought them the first real vegetables they had seen since' a ship last called. Their own gardens, of soil brought from New Zealand, were not producing very well, and the high winds have blown some of the soil away.”