Swamping of a Boat.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XIX, Issue 1780, 8 January 1886, Page 2

Swamping of a Boat.

DEATH OF ONE MAOBI FROM EXPOSURE. ANOTHER SINOS A SONG AND JUMPS OVERBOARD. A GIRL OF FOURTEEN YEARS RESCUES HIM. A correspondent of the N. Z. Times gives an account of a boat accident off D’Urville Island. A boat containing two Maori men, named Matthew Rurukn and Tepeni Tnni, and a Maori gill of about 14 yeara of age, named Bella Daniel, left one of the bays near the French Pass on the morning of 21st December for one of the baye on the mainland, to procure a load of nikau palm leaves for a new house, which was being erected by Matthew. The Maoris were returning with their cargo about midday on the 24th with a strong N.W. wind, when the boat swamped, filled with water up to the gunwale, and, becoming unmanageable, drifted seaward. Matthew, being a man of not very robust health, succumbed toward evening, and Tepeni, after securing the dead body to the boat, intimated hie intention not to survive his friend. He sang a song, tied a rope round his neck, and against the remonstrance of the girl leaped into the sea, and she, being a good swimmer, sprang after him, but only succeeded in getting him into the boat, when he was too much exhausted to recover. The brave girl then lashed the dead body of Tepeni to the boat, which continued to drift seaward all night, until the turn of the tide aud a change of wind drifted it back again to near the place whence it started the previous morning. The cries of the girl atttacted attention from the shore, and the wife of Matthew went off in a small boat and rescued her. Bella Daniel, who then did not seem much the worse for her eighteen hours’ exposure, afterwards suffered a good deal from the effects.