COLLISION IN FOG

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20891, 22 November 1937, Page 10

COLLISION IN FOG

STEAMER HURUNUI INVOLVED United Press Association—By Electric Tel egrapb —Copyright LONDON, November 19. The New Zealand Steamship Company’s cargo steamer Hurunui, bound for Newcastle from New Zealand and Australia, collided with the herring drifter Reclaim, off the Suffolk coast in a thick fog. Nine members of the crew of the djifter were drowned. One survivor was picked up. It is not known whether the Hurunui was damaged.

Lying in bed amid hot water bottles at the Lowestoft hospital, , Samuel Mortishire, the sole survivor from the Reclaim told in whispers how the Hurunui, two hundred times her size, collided with her and sank her immediately. The Hurunui towered above her in a rain squall, when the drifter's captain and mate were in the wheelhouse and the crew below decks.

They all died within sight of their home at Kessingland. Mortishire who was the only hand on deck, dropped his bucket and yelled unthinkingly: “Come up and see the fun," which is customary when anything unusual is happening. Then, realising the situation, he took a deep breath and dived over the port side as the steamer shore knife-life through the drifter. He clung to a piece of wreckage and was unconscious when picked up by the drifter Sustain, whose captain said that the swift lowering of a boat from the Hurunui was the finest piece of seamanship he had ever seen.