EARLY SAILING SHIP DAYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3865, 10 April 1928, Page 7

EARLY SAILING SHIP DAYS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir. —Your issue of January 4, 1928. contains an article on sailing ships. It named the Westland and her voyages to and from England and. New Zealand, and gave an account of one voyage during which two seamen fell from the yard, and later an apprentice fell from aloft. The date was cited as 1881. Now my wife, being a single girl emigrant on that particular voyage, is in a position to name a little discrepancy m your article. The actual date was 1883, and the two seamen were carried away with the topsail during very heavy weather, when all the passengers were battened down under the hatches. The apprentice was carried off the ship from the wheel one fine morning at breakfast time a few days later, when a big swell was running. The cry “Man overboard.' drew the attention of the girls. They rushed to the portholes, and. looking out, saw the lad drown. A lifebuoy had previously been thrown, and a boat was launched, but in launching the latter was stove in, and had to turn back to the ship or it would have been swamped or have foundered. Another boat was launched, but in the meantime the poor lad had disappeared. He had reached out to the lifebuoy more than once, bnt each time the swell had carried it out of his reach. My wife thinks his name was Wier. The captain was named Moffatt, and he was as fine a sailor as ever crossed the Pacific. I went out the same year on the British §ueen, a steamer chartered by the New ealand Shipping Company. We were in New Zealand for about two years, and then returned to England. Since then we have been to Hobart, Launceston, Melbourne, and Perth, and in 1903 came to Saskatchewan, Canada. But wo have always had a warm corner in our memory I A r New Zealand, and have sometimes wished we had stayed and grown with the country.—l am, etc., J. Fleming. Saskatchewan, Canada, February 19. a