SHIPPING CASUALTIES AT HOKITIKA.
The following particulars of the recent disasters at Hokitika are furnished by the correspondent of the " Canterbury Press :" —
The week has been fruitful in disaster ; -with weather moderate, and, for the most part of the time, very fine, there have been vessels ■wrecked, boats capsized, and numbers of lives lost on the beach and bar. On Monday, the Uosetta, a fine little schooner, nearly new, took the bar; she grounded on the south spit, and was washed over into the channel, but having no steerage way, came ashore on the beach alongside the remains of the Sir Francis Drake, against which she was knocked to pieces in two tides. This was the unfortunate termination to an unusally protracted passage of fifty days from the Manukau, of which seven were consumed off the bar. She had a few passengers, who, with the crew and cargo, were all got on shore. They had been short of provisions for some days; at the time she was lost there was not a drop of fresh water on board. The vessel was insured 'or LBoo— about a third of her value. On Tuesday, an unusually heavy sea on the bar, washed the steamer Titania, ■whose wreck has been reported be f ore, into the channel, and getting across the stream an extraordinary and perhaps foitunate state of things came about. The current being suddenly stopped, cut away a passage through the spit, close to where she lies, thus forming a new entrance, very much better in eve-rv way than the previous one, which has since filled up.
On Thursday, the Lady Franklin, from Dunedin, attempted the bar, with a light ■wind ; she took it at the wrong place, in spite of signals, and sailed oa to the south spit, just as the Titania had done. Her cargo
has been discharged, and she will probably be got off again, providing a heavy sea does not come in before she is ready to launch, in which case she will beat to pieces. On Friday, the Lyttelton, steamer, which arrived the day before from Nelson, started out to receive 140 passengers from the Lady Darling, which arrived on Sunday. With the most unpardonable recklessness, the Captain persisted in taking the bar at half tide ; and, although there was a person on board who, I believe, is in Domination for pilot— she missed a plain channel, and got on the north spit, where she remained till high water this day, when she got off, and returned into the river.
Two more wrecks ; the schooner Mary Van Every, from Stewart's Island, and a cutter, thought to be the Midge, but whose name Ihave not been able to ascertain positively, came ashore this afternoon in taking the bar — cause — wind too high. The Crest of the Wave arrived safely. She brings back the wandering telegiaph plant, so that we may expect to hear of at least the commencement of the line very soon. The steamer Lyttelton got out safely to the Lady Darling ; she will land the passengers brought by the latter vessel to-morrow. Six of the bodies of the lost from the whaleboat have been recoyered.
List of vessels now lying off the bar: — John Bullock, Jeannie Dove, Lloyd's Herald, Traveller's Bride, Wild Wave, Wallace, from Dunedin; Montezuma, Leonidns, from Melbourne; Bonnie Lassie, from Havelock ; Lady Darling, coastwise.
Last night we had the tail of a sou-wester, with a tremendous downpour of rain. The weather is now (9.30 a.m.) fine; wind S.W.; strong breeze, and a heavy sea on the bar. The JeaDnie Dove has bore up for the Grey.
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