ACCIDENT IN THE ESTUARY.

Southern Cross, Volume 5, Issue 33, 20 November 1897, Page 9

ACCIDENT IN THE ESTUARY.

FOUR PERSONS DROWNED.

On Saturday morning last Mr Robert Hughes, who had been engaged by the Invercargill Corporation in harbour work, and Mr Aitken, who had the contract for improvements to the jetty, left in the Corporation boat to place in position a beacon lying some miles down the estuary. With them, doubtless for the sake of the trip, went Albert (third son of Mr Joseph Hatch), and George (son of Mr Hartle, of the locomotive department), aged spectively fourteen and fifteen years'; They did not return on Saturday night, but it was not till Sunday afternoon that it became known that anything untoward had happened. Mr G. Clare, with Mr H. Cunningham, was out in his yacht Minnehaha, and observed a sunken boat broadside on, about a mile south of Hasting’s jetty. Pilot Glare had arranged with the Messrs Hughes and Aitken for the placing of a beacon on the Mokomoko jetty, but although the weather was fine when they started the glass was low, and he wrote a letter telling them not to come. This note came up by the morning train from the Bluff as the men were going down the river in the boat. Prom the pilot station Mr Clare saw the boat going up the harbour towards the jetty apparently all right. He believes that the craft must have been struck by a squall about 11.30 a.m. on Saturday. Search, parties were promptly organised, but so far the only body recovered is that of Mr Aitken. The boat was one of the life boats of the barque England’s Glory, which was wrecked near Bluff Harbour in 1881.