A DERELICT RAFT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIX, Issue 8140, 16 May 1906, Page 7

A DERELICT RAFT.

A remarkable piece of floteam 'came ashore on the Yorkshire coast a few weeks ago, in tbs shape of a giant raft containing over seventy t.ons of timber, , and about eight tons of iron chains and steel plates. The timber was in the form of great balks about thirtyfour feet long .and seventeen inches equate, with twenty-toot pieces aoross the ends, and the CHAINS AND OTHER IRONWORK had been used to bind the whole into a compact mass. The balks were bound together with fathom on fathom of ohain, and were also bolted with steel rail and proteoted at both ends with steel plates. The wood was as good as new, but the iron work WAS VERY RUSTY, and it was evident that the raft had been at sea for a long time. It came immediately from the north, but a reasonable assumption was that it had been adrift as A DANGEROUS DERELICT in the track of shipping in the crowded North Sea, and it is impossible to tell bow black its record may have been. Every year ships and steamers are reported as missing, and often no tidings of their fate ever reach their owners and the relatives of the officers and crew. A vessel that HAD RAMMED THE RAFX would probably have sunk almost • at once, and another mystery

would have been added to the many mysteries of the sea. A fishing yawl reponed that it bad collided with the dereliot a few days before it oame ashore. The raft was then awash, and was not Been until the baot bad run halt its lentgh upon it. The boat oareened, bat happily the raft sagged with the weight, and allowed the yawl to shake clear. It is not kdown whence the dereliot raft oame, but probably it had been pat together in some lumber camp in the United States or Canada, and had accidentally drifted down a river into the open sea. As a piece of flotsam it became the property of the man who found it on the Yorkshire coast. I ===================