GREENVALE DREDGING COMPANY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2499, 5 February 1902, Page 23

GREENVALE DREDGING COMPANY.

An. extraordinary general meeting of the shareholders of this company was held on Friday at the office of the secretary iMr S. T. Itframs)", Bond street, for the purpose of considering the position of the company and determining- as to its future operations. Only fivs

shareholders, including the chairman (Mr CalVert) and the secretary (who held four proxies) were present.

The Chairman regretted that, outside of the directors, no shareholders had thought it worth while to show sufficient interest in the position of the company to attend the meeting and hear what explanation was to be made by the directors for closing down. The unfortunate ' position they were in was that the mortgagee^ ;o whom JEBOO was owing, had* seized the dredgp, md the wages men had a lien for a balance of wages amounting to £137. The total' debt of the company was £1520, and the available assets nil. There might be some JE2O or JSS3O coming in from calls, but outside that they had no assets at all. The dredge started to work .towards the end of September, and stopped »n the 14th December, and during the interval lhad won only 270e 9dwt of gold, valued at £105. ,!The wages during that time ran up to £190, and the mortgagees had given notice that unless ,they made expenses with the dredge it would the taken possession of. Accordingly they had closed down. It was very unfortunate that [they had had to do so, however, just when they 'did, as a number of shareholders seemed to be under the impression that had they carried on for a dozen yards or so they would have proved whether the claim was payable by working a bore, which had been put down, and from .which it was alleged good prospects had been got. Since the start of the dredge the company had experienced very great difficulty in connection with the machinery — the pump being quite inefficient for the work, and there had been great loss of power on account of the Condenser not working properly. The result was that the dredge certainly did not turn over what she ought to have done, and the shareholders in the district complained about the manner in which the dredge worked, and suggested that the dredgemaster was incointoetent for the position. In order to see whether The unsatisfactory results were attributable to "mismanagement or to the incapacity of cne dredge, the directorate decided to ask Mr JP Smith, mining expert, to visit the claim and jreport. He had done so; he spent five day» jra'th6 ground, and he reported that everything, In his opinion, had been done by the dredgefcnaster which it was possible for him to have done to achieve success. Mr. Smith examined &he ground the dredge was on and the tailings, «pd he was perfectly satisfied that the gold .■was not being lost, but that so far as the dredge triad worked, the gold was not m the ground. (He bad also reported that &o far as the claim 9iad been worked he saw no indication of any Wrue -wash, and that the whole of the stuff was fwhat might be termed a river drift. The gold ;»as the result of the breaking down of the Vauriferous gravels higher up the water shed. fThis was exceedingly disappointing, because up to that time the company was supposed to |je on similar ground to that worked so satis(actorily some distance lower down the river. .The position seemed to the directors to bs hopeless, and, seeing that they were 'owing £1500, it was no use trying to raise money or otherwise finance the company {through its difficulties. It was true that Mr ismith thought that the claim had not been (turned over sufficiently to justify the assertion jthat it had been thoroughly tested, but uuless rihey had some assurance that the ground higher up was very different to what had betu /worked, it was manifest that the ground would not pay to dredge. All that was. left to them i-was to allow the dredge to be sold by the tuoitgage'es to pay their loan and the wag^t, l»nd ne did hot .think there would be aiijthniz jto, pay any ot&er creditors, whose claims, all rtold, amounted to about £300. For a period [of 21 months the directors had draivn 110 fees — not a single sixpence, — and he considered that the company had been managed more economically than any other company in the district. Jit was, of course, no good their talking about ('liquidating, as tfiere was 110 money with which tto liquidate. There were fouip outstanding calls for which they might have to prosecute.

After a few remarks by the shareholders present as an unfortunate circumstance that ( the bore about which they had received the most glowing accounts had not been tested, the meeting closed.