A Disabled Steamer.

Opunake Times, Volume IV, Issue 163, 24 January 1896, Page 2

A Disabled Steamer.

Sydney, January 22.

A passenger describes the picking up of the disabled steamer Strath Nevis by the Miowera. The vessel had been long missing, having left Victoria (British Columbia) on October 15th, with 165 Chinese passengers, and 39 of a crew, bound for Japan, when 1700 miles out she lost a propeller during a heavy gale, and drifted away for sixty days on the great Japan current. Provisions ran out, and those on board were living on flour and tinned salmon which comprised the cargo. At the rate the vessel was drifting she would have been on the Amencan coast in ten days. The Miowera got a tow-line out, but it parted the same night. She then stood by the disabled vessel, but the tremendous sea prevented a second line being brought into use for 42 hours. Eventually a volunteer crew from the Miowera launched a boat and got hold of the line. The wind afterwards increased to hurricane force, aud the hawser, being unable to stand

the strain, snapped off. The sea was so terrific that it seemed as if the Miowera’s engine room would be flooded. The wind carried the vessel so near the shore prior to the cable parting that the Miowera headed seaward, and the strain on her was so heavy that her stern was brought under water. At the time when the cables parted the Miowera lost sight of the Strath Nevis, and after cruising about for many hours next day she abandoned the search, and proceeded on the voyage. Those on board only heard of the safety of the Strath Nevis on arrival here.