BLOWN OUT TO SEA.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 20, 22 January 1913, Page 3

BLOWN OUT TO SEA.

NO TRACE OF THE BOAT

(Per Press Association.)

Timaru, January 21

By an -unfortunate error of judgment on the part of an old habitue cl the river, it is feared that two lives were lost at the Rangitata River rpouth to-day. Charles Nicholas, ai elderly man, an old resident of Temuka, a well-known angler, and A. E. Darby, understood to be a Geraldine resident, this morning undertook to cross part of the Rangitata River, near one of its mouths, in a flat-bot-tomed boat. Nicholas had ferried one man over, and was fetching over Darby when he was overpowered by the current and carried out to sea. An off-shore breeze was blowing, and the boat was carried a long way out ic sea. Word was telephoned to Timaru. and the harbourmaster, Captain Tait, went out in the Board’s motor launch to the rescue, starting at 1 p.m. He reached the river at 3.30, and zigzagged about for some time southward but saw nothing of the boat. In the afternoon the wind changed, and he concluded that with such a breezfe the boat must have drifted ashore if she had not been swamped and lost. There was no sign of the occupants ashore. The people at Rangitata thought the launch did not go as far out as where the boat was last seen. There was a considerable breeze and a strong jobble all the morning.