Overdue Ships.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 6268, 15 July 1890, Page 2

Overdue Ships.

The barque Assaye is now 146 days out from Loudon,'and the very gravest fears are entertained that she has come to grief in some way or other. The ship Otaki, one of the smartest of the New Zealand .Shipping, Company’s sailing fleet, and which has made soraej exceedingly fast passages, is 115 days out, about three weeks more than her average run. We have precedent for deeming it quite possible that the Assaye may, through stress of weather, have gone ashore on one of the rocky islet groups which stud the Southern Ocean, and some of which are right in the course of ships bound from England to New Zealand, via the Cape, Among these are Prince Edward’s Island, Marion Island, the Crozets, and Kerguelen Island, while some hundreds of miles north of the track, but still within limits which a ship driven out of its course by bad weather might reach, are Amsterdam Island and St. Paul’s Island. When the Strathmore was wrecked on the Crozets in July, 1885, the survivors were cooped up on the islands for over sis months, and experienced terrible privations before they were rescued by the American whaler Phoenix. To prevent the possibility of such needless suffering happening to those whoso fate is now hanging in uncertainty we would suggest that the Government without further delay should cable Home and to the Cape giving instructions for steamers coming this way to pass as close as possible to these islands with a view to sighting them, and ascertaining if any smoke or other signals are observable. . The expense of such investigations would not be very great, and whether successful or not in solving the present uncertainty, they would at least give us the satisfaction of knowing that we had done what we could under the circumstances. —Evening Post,