The Wreck of the Wairarapa

Southland Times, Issue 13062, 9 November 1894, Page 2

The Wreck of the Wairarapa

THE COURT OF ENQUIRY. (By Telegraph.) Auckland, Nov. 8. The enquiry was continued this morning when A. J. Chamberlain, a passenger, said there was a good deal of confusion but no panic when she struck. He saw the captain on the starboard side of the bridge and heard him say “ Hurry (up, lads.” When asked “Up to the time you were washed off the steamer did you notice anything done by the officers,” witness replied : “Nothing came under my notice, excepting what was done to the starboard boat. I don’t mean to say nothing was done. I certainly thought tbe chief officer should have taken control when got on the rocks. ” Asked as to the second officer, witness said: “ I was not looking to him but to the first officer, and complained that the chief officer, when asked to secure oranges that were being devoured by hungry and thirsty survivors, to provide against the possibility of prolonged detention on the rocks, replied that he could not do anything as the people were hungry and thirsty.” Witness said he spoke to the people himself, and they agreed to collect and save the oranges. Witness was asked : “ You think there was necessity for some one to take superintendence ?” “ Most decidedly. Here were fifty or sixty people on tho rocks. We looked to the captain first, and then to the • chief officer, I don’t consider he took control at all at that time. He may have been prostrated the same as others, but was certainly not knocked about as some of the men I have mentioned.” Witness, however, said he could not offer any opinion whether anything more could have been done towards saving life. He had a conversation with Captain Mclntosh at 10 p.m. He was then perfectly sober and in the condition in which he had always known him. Sydney Cecil Smith, a saloon passenger, deposed that about 6 p.m. he said to the captain: “ I suppose we are near the Bay of Islands ?” He could not say whether the captain was joking, but he replied: “I wish you would tell me where I am,” or words to that effect. He knew the captain personally. Towards 10 o’clock he made a reply t.o a similar remark that “we are very wide of Poor Knights,” and afterwards, that if he saw the Poor Knights he would then know where he was. All the evening he was very anxious. He said to Mr Chick in witness’s hearing that he had smoked more cigars that day than he had smoked for the last month. The captain then walked to the port side and looked seaward. That was about a quarter past 10 o’clock. The evidence of the other witnesses was unimportant, and the inquiry was adjourned till Monday. Mr Little, undertaker, is seriously ill from blood poisoning, caused by handling the bodies of the drowned. The Argyle brought up seven bodies for burial, including those of the Misses Scoular. Others identified are Mr Chick, of Dunedin, and Mr David Dryborough, of Sydney. So far about seventy bodies have been recovered. The fourth life raft, supposed to have drifted to seawithpeopleon it,has been found ashore at Kaitoke. The bodies found on tbe Arid islands are supposed to be those washed oft this raft. Owing to more bodies rising near the wreck the police have decided to stay out this week. Further stores have been sent down and, owing to Mr Little’s case, a quantity of gloves to use in handling the dead so as to avoid the risk qf blood-poison-ing. The -whole of the Scoular family have been identified and their bodies go to Dunedin. H.M.S. Royalist has landed search parties to patrol the coast and is cruising from the Needles south. Wellington, Nov. 8. Mr A. Black, one of the survivors, has arrived in Wellington. He states that he clung to the davits near the steamer’s bridge all night and from his position was able to see all that went on on the bridge and was, he says, the only survivor who saw the last of Captain Mclntosh. During the early part of the night the bridge was crowded, chiefly with women, and waves broke five or six feet over them. Gradually the terrible impact weakened the structure and about daylight Black could hear the women crying that the bridge was going, and soon after a heavy sea smashed up the starboard end, carrying into the swirl the crowd who had been huddled upon it. For a time they were washed in and out with the wreckage, struggling, and then all was over. When the wreckage finally washed over there only remained on what was left of the bridge the captain and a young lady (this it is understood was Miss Knight). The captain was standing by her and speaking to her, waves from time to time coming over the two, but it might have been, Black thinks, a quarter of an hour after the wrecking of tho starboard end that the captain walked two or three yards from the lady climbed on the port rail of the bridge and plunged head first into the sea. A few minutes later the lady fell from the bridge and was washed away, leaving what had proved so delusive a haven of refuge without an occupant. Black 'saw all this from a distance of nine or ten feet from the chief actors Jn it.