COOK STRAIT MYSTERY

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 157, 29 March 1939, Page 5

COOK STRAIT MYSTERY

Unconscious Man Found Floating

DOES NOT REMEMBER HOW

HE FELL IN

To be found floating unconscious in Cook Strait, dragged ashore, taken to a homestead, and then sent, to the city in a motor-lorry, and so to the Wellington Hospital, and not to know anything at all about it was the strange experience of Mr. J. Curran, an inmate of the Salvation Army's Industrial Home in Miramar, last week. Sometimes the incredible happens. It happened in this case. A postal official, fond of fishing, wandered round the shore toward Cape Terawhiti on Monday of last week. Selecting a group of rocks that jut out from the shore opposite Seal Rock (which blinks its warning to the passing shipping since the wreck of the Penguin there), he cast Ids line into the placid waters of Cook Strait and was about to take things easy when the astounding sight of a man’s body, floating upward quite near the slioiv, met ids Z iaze. He lost no time in scrambling out to the body and brought it asiiore. only to discover that the “corpse” was not dead. The man still breathed faintly: tlie heart still beat. He tried to work tlie man back to consciousness, but. failing to do so. summoned help from the adjacent MeMenamin station.

There was a further unsuccessful attempt at resuscitation. Finally it was decided that it was best that tlie man should receive attention at a hospial. so he was lifted into tlie station lorry and taken to Wellington by way of South Makara.

The lorry pulled up at the central police statio.ii, where tlie ambulance was waiting to convey Mr. Curran to the hospital. ■'That was on Monday of last week. The man is still in the hospital, 'doing as well as can be expected. Tlie Salvation Army authorities say that Mr. Curran left tlie home for Wellington on St. Patrick's Day and did not return that night. It is said that Mr. Curran had a habit of wandering at times, and that his memory was not reliable. When asked how he got into the sea in Cook Strait he denied that he had ever been in the sea.

Mr. Curran is nearly 70 years old and has been an inmate of the home for a long time.