LATE MR J. TAIAROA.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LVIII, Issue 8955, 4 January 1908, Page 5

LATE MR J. TAIAROA.

The news of the death of Mr John Taiaroa will bo received with great regret throughout tho Dominion, says a Press Association telegram. He was the oldest sou of the late Hon. H. K. Tairoa, and in his day was one of the-- best-known footballers in New Zealand. He represented in the throo-quarter line in 1881 and 1882, aud was a member of the first New Zealand team to visit Australia. That was in 1884; the record shows that lit) played iv every match. He was a good "all-round athlete, fortysix years of age at tho time of his deatli.

Details of tho sad occurrence show that he had been to Dunedin with his mother, aud returned in a motor launch, aud arriving at the Maori Kiiik jetty about 11 o'clock at night. His mates had got out, and Taiaroa was following thorn. He either slipped on the stage, which is not quite level and is rather slippery, or tripped over the launch painter. At auy rate he fell into the water, and was quickly carried under the wharf by the stroug flood tide. Cox saw him about twenty or thirty yards from the shore after the tide had carried him through underneath the wharf, and called out to him to strike out for the shore. Taiaroa answered, "All right." or "I am all right," and was then lost sight of in the darkness. Thinking that he was swimming from the shore by mistake, the others kept calling out, but he was not seen or heard afterwards.

In an account of the fatality the Post's Dunedin correspondent states that a plank forms a gangway by which people lauding on the stage reach the embankment. It is rather difficult to effect a, landing when the tide is coining in, for the water rushes through the piles of the wharf at such a rate that great care has to be takeu to prevent a boat being carried under the wharf.

The late Mr Taiaroa was a widower with five children.