CRUISERS AND CASTAWAYS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8995, 4 December 1907, Page 4

CRUISERS AND CASTAWAYS.

The wreck of the ship Dundonald at the Auckland Islands, and the terrible privations suffered by the crew during a period of. eight months, has revived a suggestion frequently made by the press of this dominion and of the Commonwealth, that the vessels on the Australasian naval stations should be utilised for the search and rescue of shipwrecked mariners on the uninhabited islands of the Paciric. It is a suggestion that ought to be favourably considered by the authorities. At all events periodic cruises among the desolate islands lying out of the track of ships might be undertaken with the object of ascertaining if castaways are upon any of them. It might interfere to some extent with the routine of the warships, but the visits might possibly be arranged at such times as concentration of the fleet was not necessary. Many of the vessels lie idle in harbour, or fill in their time by cruising along the coasts without any very special object in view. Surely they could be spared for a brief period to search for castaways on islands such as those of the Auckland group. Had the cruisers on the New Zealand station made an occasional voyage to this group, the men of the Dundonald would have been rescued long before they were. Had it not been for the fact that a scientific party was despatched to the islands in the Hinemoa, it is possible that every one of the crew of the wrecked ship would have succumbed to the terrible hardships they must have continued to undergo. If our cruisers could be utilised as suggested, engines of destruction would be turned, for a time at least, into beneficent sea- ' rovers.