MISHAP TO TUG

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 197, 23 August 1935, Page 8

MISHAP TO TUG

GAPING HOLE BELOW WATER LINE INCIDENT AT PATENT SLIP [ Per Press Association. ] WELLINGTON, Aug. 22. One o-f the strangest nautical mishaps that has ever happened in Port Nicholson befell the Union Steamship Company's harbour tug Natone this morning. She was being hauicd up on to the patent slip in Evans Bay, when apparenlty, without warning, she heeled ever on the cradle and came to rest at a precarious angle on her port side, shipping a quantity of water.

The tug, which is well known on the harbour, is a small wooden vessel 86 feet long and of shallow draught. Preparations were made this morning for slipping her for annual cleaning and painting. The weather was almost perfect, with a slight off-shore breeze, and the tide almost at the full, when the smaller cradle on the western side of the slip was run down and rhe boat' manoeuvred into position upon it. Then was commenced the pull shorewards, two stout metal cables taking the strain from the power house to thf* cradle. The pulling had not been long in progress, when the tug slowly and gently heeled over towards the western and nearest jetty. She has little freeboard, and the sea was soon pouring below the decks, while about half a dozen men cn board made a hasty scramble for the starboard rail which was high in the air. The hauling was immediately stopped. Captain V. G. Webb, maiine superintendent for the Union Company, said the accident was due to one of the blocks which keep the hull on the cradle voming adrift.

Shortly after nne o’clock the Wellington Harbour Board’s floating crane Hikitia arrived and moored against the dolphin on the opposite side of the jetty to the tug. With the assistance of a diver, who had been under water intermittently for three hours, two steel wire hawsers were fixed beneath the hull of the Natone fore and aft of the superstructure on the pert side. The Hikitia commenced to haul just after 2 o’clock, and only a few minutes were required to bring the tug’s deck clear of the water. As the crane took the suain the forward j hawser crushed the bulwarks for a third of the ship’s length, and carried away a mast stay. Men on the opposite jetty pulled away the chocks on the starboard side, and the vessel righted herself to reveal a gaping hole on the port side amidships and just below the waiter lino. It was approximately four feet square find had been caused by the boat rolling on to the loosened chock which had let her down. T«e Natone was then hauled cn to the slip.