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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 29, 17 July 1902, Page 6

Ifc will be witbin the recollection of our readers (says the Rodney Freeman's Jownalj that some six or eight months ago the Commonwealth was starch d by the romantic account of how the Uev. Father Itouillao a simple missionary priest of the Marist Order, sailed his Ihtle schooner, Ec ipac manned by a orew of dusky boys, from the Solomon Islands into Sydney Harbor. His action in navigating his tiuy ciaft through the storms of the Pacific, evoked at the time a note of universal applause. The little vessel, which he had brought to Sydney for repairs, was barely seaworthy, and wondpr was expressed by those who saw her that she had survived the buffeting of an unusually rough passage. Then some of the yachting clubs of Sydney enthusiastically took the dismantled Eclipse in hand, and returned her to her missionary captain thoroughly renovated. Father Rouillao returned with his boys to the islands, and an occasional echo of his doings reached Sydney from the great silence of the Solomonp, and told hia friends that he WMidoing well. But a few weeks ago a cable report from Norfolk Island appeared in the Sydney papers, stating that the Eclipse had been caught in a storm, became unmanageable, and was stranded. The Titus, one of Messrs Burns, Philp's island fleet (it was from one of Burns, PhiJp's officers, by the way, that Father Bouillac received his first lesson in navigation, and made Sydney on the strength of it), arrived in Port the other day bearing the news of the misadventure. Captain Bibbing stated that the Bcene of the disaster was on the weather side of Gaudalcanar, but the damage done to the schooner was not of a serious nature. In all probability, the Captain said, the schooner would before long be floated. This was also the general opinion of those who had visited the scene of the stranding. Father Rouillao is an intrepid mariner, recalling in the present, as in his past previous risky experiences, some of the best traditions of early Irish missioneering. _________^___^