THE WAKATERE EXCURSION.

Observer, Volume XXI, Issue 1183, 31 August 1901, Page 2

THE WAKATERE EXCURSION.

A Prolonged and Painful Fast

T^ HE young people /who took ■■■ passage in the YVakalere for the Thames on Saturday, availing themselves of the excursion rates on the occasion of the football match, have much reason to remember their experiences for many a long clay to come. As is well known, 1 the Wakatere grounded, and was not able to return on Saturday night, and the great majority of the five or' six hundred excursionists did not reach Auckland again till Monbay forenoon. If they had all been pro\ided with money, and i could have engaged bods and paid for meals at the Thames hotels, all would have been well. But a fair proportion of them, relying on the prospect of returning that night, had taken their meals for the day with them in the form of sandwiches, and had not a sixpence in their pockets. ••••••••• Others again, who had started out with a little cash, spent what they had immediately after the j match, and while still happily unconscious of the enforced detention awaiting them. There was consequently a great deal of misery and not a little starvation as a result of the delay. Young petfple trudged the streets of the Thames during both nights, being unable to sleep on the steamer, and having nowhere else to go. Also, as a matter of absolute fact, some of the excursionists had not a single bite to eat from Saturday night* until their return on Monday morning. They had no money with which to pay for food, and preferred to endure the pangs of hunger rather than beg for it. •••••• ••• The people on the steamer did the best they could to provide for the sudden demand made upon them, and so also did the hotelkeepers ashore. But, after ajl, this provided only for the feeding of those with -money to pay. The others were helpless and starving. Some of them fortunately had friends at the. Thames, and others remembered acquaintances who j gladly tided them over their emer- : gency, but there were others again j who knew no one, and who had no alternative but to endure the aw- ; fal -'misery of. that enforced wait. And only those who experienced it can realise what'that misery 7 was, wi th a craving stomach, and the

inconvenience and worry of numberless transhippingH. Some of the were young girls out for a. holiday on their own account, arid wholly without friends. The occurrence raises the question of how far the Northern Company whs liable for the victualling of these passengers, and, for our own-, part; we .are satisfied that their liability was considerable. In the first place, when it was- found that the Wakaterc was hopelessly aground, it was the palpable duty of the Northern Company's officials to have chartered the paddre-stea-mer Awarua, which was lying by, and to have sent the excursionists to town. This would probably have deprived the Company of the profits of the trip, but as a matter of equity and. prudent management, it should have been done without n'card to the few pounds it would have cost. .•• •«. .«. (■'ailing this, the Company owed it to these five or six hundred excursionists to see that none of thorn wont without food, even if only bread and butter or sandwiches wore provided. It is a serious matter to take so many people, and voting people at that, so far away from home and turn them adrift on their own resources, just because the steamer happens to go aground. The Company scorns to bo. indifferent. It makes its profit either way. But some consideration is due to the multitude of people who paid their faros, relying on being brought back that night, ajid who were placed in such nn awkward and, in some instances, cruel position, through no fault of their own. The painful experiences of some of these people, who went without food for a day and a half, are a reproach to the Northern Steamship Company and its man* agfinent.