COLLISION BETWEEN THE STEAMER ALBION AND THE SCHOONER ISABELLA PRATT.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3014, 22 February 1881, Page 3

COLLISION BETWEEN THE STEAMER ALBION AND THE SCHOONER ISABELLA PRATT.

FOUNDERING OP THE ISABELLA PRATT.

(by" telegraph.)

Auckland, February 22,

The Albion arrived shortly before 10 o'clock this morning with the Australian cricketers. She reports having collided with and sunk the topsail schooner Isabella Pratt off Port Charles at 4.20 a.m. All hands were saved. The Isabella Pratt left here in ballast yesterday for Tairua, where she was to have been loaded with timber for Oamaru. She was commanded by Captain Cross. Later.

The collision between the schooner Isabella Pratt and the steamer Albion occurred at four o'clock this morning. The captain of the Albion > says the schooner's light was not burning. The first they knew of the schooner on the Albion was about four minutes before she struck, and she was hid from view by the smoke of the steamer blowing over her. The engines were immediately stopped, but she struck the vessel near the fore-rigging, cutting her almost through. Some of the rigging caught the steamer's jibboom, and held the wreck up for a tevr minutes, which enabled the six men on board to scramble on the Albion, otherwise all would probably have been lost. The AlbiGn's jibboora was carried away, and the schooner sunk immediately. Captain Cross denies that the lamp was not burning, and asserts positively that it was. He saye he had just set bis watch, and went below to pick out the position on the chart, when he heard the mate cry to the man at the wheel to keep her away, and call to the steamer to look out where she was coming to. Captain Cross's private loss is estimated at £150, which is uninsured. The vessel is believed to be insured for £1000 in the National office.