Racing Against the Sun.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 2717, 4 February 1892, Page 2

Racing Against the Sun.

The American authorities having decided that no passengers ex foreign steamships should land after sundown, there was a few hours of intense excitement, according to the American papers, on board the Cunard steamer Etruria on her last run to New York. At noon on the 25th October she was eighty-four miles from Sanday Hook, and had a further twenty-five miles to steam to reach quarantine before sundown. It thus bocame a lace against the sun, or, as more exact scientists on board described it, a race against the world, the earth rolling eastward, the Etruria steaming westward. Whether a spurt was put on, as the American papers say, or it was the vessel’s normal performance in smooth water, the Etruria managed to cover the distance at the rate of twenty-one knots an hour, but having to slow at one of the bends of the Ship Channel, she was three minutes behind sunset, but rather than keep the large number of passengers on board the whole of one night, the examination was allowed to proceed and the passengers to land.