South Canterbury Times. TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 1889.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 5030, 11 June 1889, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 1889.

Thebe is evidently need for the exercise of ingenuity by some one in the invention of a simple and efficient means of lowering boats safely from vessels at sea. When the steamer Maitai was wrecked the other day, both the boats that were launched went into the water end on, and filled. In one case the fall ” was let go by some excited person, before anyone got into the boat, and she went down endwise and filled, but her air tanks kept her from sinking. Being full however she could not be pulled to the ship’s side; hence the necessity . for the people, including an elderly woman, jumping into the sea ; hence the death of the purser, who dared not jump. In the case of the other boat one of the men has said:— “ I was one of the three who went into the mate’s boat, and when the afterfall was let go suddenly she hung up straight on end by her nose. The cook’s mate George was knocked clean overboard, and never came up again ; while I was pitched from the bows down to the sternsheet, and got a nasty bruising, spraining my hand and hurting my knee. The third man was lucky in being able to grasp the foretackle and

hold on. When we got her on her keel she was full of water and we had to bale her out and fish up the rowlocks from the bottom,” Therefore—to say nothing of the inconvenience and discomfort occasioned to everyone from having to get into boats full of water and then hale them out —it is clear that two lives were lost through the clumsiness of the boat-lowering apparatus.

Some anxiety is felt as to the fate of two prospectors, named Malcolm and Young, who, it is understood, bad made up their minds to cross from Milford Sound to Lake Te Anau. The Minister of Lands has telegraphed that no anxiety need be felt, as the men bad plenty of provisions, and intended to stay at Milford Sound until a steamer called. They, however, changed this intention soon after Mr Richardson became aware of it, for four days after he saw them they started across the country. Sutherland took them in his boat to the head of Lake Ada, and returned with the boat. From that time, the 23rd ult., nothing has been bead of them. They must be in a fix somewhere. If they got across the saddle all right, they ought to have reached Te Anau before now ; if they did not get over the saddle they would be trapped above Lake Ada, as there would be no boat there to traverse the lake by. One of the men is 60 years of age, and therefore can hardly be fitted to face great physical trials. Perhaps it would be interfering too much with “ the liberty of the subject ” to provide other punishments than those they themselves run into, who foolhardily attempt such journeys in the winter ; but it does seem more than a civilised community should calmly put up with, to have to send search parties into manifest dangers, to rescue people who run into those dangers quite unnecessarily. [Since the foregoing was put in type the two men have turned up.]