THE ILL-FATED WARATAH

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13993, 31 August 1909, Page 5

THE ILL-FATED WARATAH

HOPEFUL SUGGESTION. A DJHFT SOUTH. iVvss Assuuiatiun-Jiy Telegraph Copyright LONDON, August 2\). A correspondent recalls the rescue of the Hutch barque .Dordrecht, which was missing for scVeral weeks oil' South Africa, i.n 1881. Her posit/ion was just as hard to locate as the AVaratab's. ADELAIDE, August ;.!0. The s.s. Ayrshire kept a look out for th:: Waratah, but saw no trace of her. PERTH. August 30. A a officer of the steamer Madura, from Delagoa Bay, states that Lhe east-north-east current had taken an extraordinary southerly set, with strong northerly winds prevailing at times. lie believed that the AVaratab, if disabled, was drifting southwards, and would now be making towards Australia in a very southerly latitude. A POSSIBLE EXPIvAftATION. A correspondent in the "Sydney Morning Herald,"' while believing the Warn tali to bo afloat, suggests that a suhmaiine disturbance may have overwhelmed her. The correspondent lias had experience, dn laying deep-scca. cables He says:—"lf she is not found in the course of the, next two or three months, I can only give you the particulars of an event that did take place in the Pacific ocean to a steamer going from Sydney to San . Francisco, and although the last position of the steamer Waratah was in the Southern Indian oc_can, she might have been just over the position -where, and as a consequence, a tidal wave submerged the shin, in which case she would have disappeared absolutely, and no trace of her would be found., .... The steamer Alameda., on her way from Sydney to San Francisco, did experience, a. tidal wave of this kind, and if it had taken place in the night time this ship would most certainly have disappeared and never have been- heard of again ; but fortunately it took -.place in broad daylight and on a calm and smooth sea. The officer of the watch saw a huge and appalling sea arise a long distance ahead of the ship, and he immediately had the engines stopped, and when the avalanche of water passed the ship she was almost stationary; but the. wave swept the ship from stem to stern, washing the officer from the bridge and breaking his logs. Had that ship not been stopped, and she had been going'thirteen miles an hour, there is no doubt whatever she would have been plunged to the bottom of the ocean into that cavity the water of the ocean was then filling up, and, of course, no one possibly could have been left to tell the tale, nor any part of the ship ever found in that position on' the surface of the ocean. This actually took place to my own knowledge in the Pacific Ocean. There are happenings of the sea. that only men who have laid cables on the floor of the ocean can possibly experience or know anything about."