WHARF DROWNING ACCIDENT
Rescue Attempts Failed Fuller information about the drowning which occured in Wellington harbour on Monday evening reveals that when Mr. David Gillespie, an elderly seaman in an overseas ship, was seen to tall from the gangway, the cry was immediately given, "Man overboard.” The ship was about three feet out from the wharf and a minute after the alarm was given a waterside worker, Mr. L. H. Williams, went down a rope, and found Mr. Gillespie almost immediately. By hanging on to the rope with both hands he lowered himself, fully clothed, into the water, till he could wrap his legs around the drowning man. He held him in this manner for some minutes, with his head out of the water, but the strain on his arms and the cold water proved exhausting, and Mr. Gillespie slipped Meanwhile other waterside workers ran to get ropes and lights. A gunner on the snip lowered himself over the side on a rope with a light, but Mr. Gillespie had momentarily disappeared. The gunner was swung under the wharf, and he and a deck officer, who had also gone down, saw him floating in the water, drifting under the wharf. They could not reach him, but another officer, a refrigerating engineer, stripped off, and managed to get Mr. Gillespie back to the side of V tliat time a ladder and a boat-hook had been obtained and Mr. Gillespie ■fras brought up on to the wharf, where the gunner started artificial respiration. After about a quarter of an hour he was breathing, and the ship’s" doctor advised that he be removed to hospital. He was placed in q Free Ambulance, which had been called, but died before reaching the hospital. ■
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Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 226, 21 June 1944, Page 8
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289WHARF DROWNING ACCIDENT Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 226, 21 June 1944, Page 8
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