A SWIM ASHORE

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 6, 1 March 1900, Page 37

A SWIM ASHORE

About the beginning of 1804 Hill left Old England once more, this time for the Antipodes, and the stirring scenes of the Maori War. He joined the ship "Empress," bringing the Military Train to New Zealand, as an A.B. In due course the " impress," a fine ship of the old stu'n-s'l boom days, dropped anchor in Auckland Harbour, oil' the Wynyard Pier. Hill was tired of sailoring once more, and he knew he had a chance of handling a gun again if he could only get ashore. So he obtained his discharge by the simple method of deserting his ship. " I wanted to get dear of her," is his matte r-of- fact narrative of a remarkable swim, " and I wanted to go soldiering again. I swam ashore the second night after we arrived. A shipmate of mme — he's driving a 'bus or something of that sort in Auckland now — lowered me down by a rope over the ship's bows. I had my coat, cap, shirt, and trousers on, and half- Wellington boots. I started to swim for the shore, but the tide was coming in very strong, and I could only go with it. We were lying a good way out in the stream, and the tide took me right up past the ships and the wharf. I floated part of the time when I was tired of swimming, and in the 70i,. L-No. 6.-35

cud I got ashovo right up on Watchman Island, off l'onsonby. \ swam from there to the mainland at. INmsouby Point, and lay down on the beach for a. sleep. After a while L walked down into the town. Next day 1 joined the Militia, and was out in the camp at Ulahulni for a week. Then 1 heard of Major Von Teinpsky and his Forest Hangers, and 1 eatne bark and joined ' Von ' in Auckland."