UNFORTUNATE ENGINEERS

Taranaki Daily News, 28 August 1930, Page 7

UNFORTUNATE ENGINEERS

WRECKS OF TAHITI AND MANUKA. AN EXCITING EIGHTEEN MONTHS. Some sailors go through a long life without even seeing the excitement of a shipwreck, while others seem to be doomed to suffer the peril. Disasters in the Union Company’s fleet are fortunately few and far between, and it seems odd that in the two last big wrecks that overtook Red Funnel ships two engineers should figure in each instance. One of the actors in these thrilling dramas has not been more than about eighteen months at sea, and if he goes on accumulating experiences at the same rate for the rest of his life he will have a remarkable record. The two men in both wrecks are Mr. D. A. Gibb and Mr. D. MacKenzie, the former being fifth engineer and the latter eighth engineer. Mr. MacKenzie is the man who has been wrecked twice in eighteen months. Both were on the Manuka when she ran ashore south of the Nuggets and on the Tahiti when she came to grief in the Pacific. Oddly enough both wrecks happened on the sixteenth of the month —the Manuka on December 16, and the Tahiti eight months later, on August 16.

Mr. Gibb is an Aucklander, and Mr. MacKenzie comes from Dunedin.

As the accident to the Tahiti happened. in the engineer’s department it can be imagined the staff had a strenuous task trying to save the ship, and no doubt when the full story is told it will be as gallant as that connected with t'he Manuka. In the old days the share of the engine room staff in the working of a ship was not always recognised as it should have been. For years there was more or less feeling between the deck staff and the engine room staff —the inevitable legacy from the days of sail, when the men on deck were supreme';

In recent years, however, the engineers have had more justice done to them. After the wreck, of the Manuka her gallant commander, Captain RossClark, saw that their heroic work was properly acknowledged. Their “great gallantry,” their “devotion to duty in standing-by in the face of great danger, until ordered away,” was put on record, and the public, having read the story of the wreck, agreed that the tribute was only fitting.