"HOWLING HURRICANE"

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 135, 12 June 1929, Page 11

"HOWLING HURRICANE"

NIGHT OE PERIL AT SEA

SCOW SEVERELY BATTERED

(By Telegraph.) (Special to "The Evening Post.")

AUCKLAND, This Day. With her fore-topmast and . bowsprit broken off, her mainsail torn to ribbons, and her topgear in a general tangle, the schooner-rigged scow Seagull came to anchor on the western side of Brown's Island yesterday after a severe buffeting in a north-westerly storm which swept Hauraki Gulf on Monday night. The Seagull was bringing a cargo of sand to Auckland-from Whangapoua, near Mercury Bay. Yesterday afternoon a tug was sent to tow her up the harbour. ;

The Seagull bore evidence of the bad time the four members of her ship's company had come through. "We were on our way from Whangapoua with a load of sand last night," said the skipper, "when we were struck by the gale. We were in the open between Cape Colville and Auckland, and at about nine-o?cloek our fore-topmast carried away; the bowsprit went, too, our mainsail was torn to shreds, and the top gear ism a mess. ■'■'

From what could be further gathered it.seemed that after the crash came at about 9 o'clock the crew must have had a particularly strenuous time in furling the sails, gathering up the wrecked gear, and rigging . the emergency sail that enabled them to beat in until the vessel got on the harbour side of Brown's Island. ,

"It was the -severest night 1 have ever been through, and I have been at sea for nearly thirty years," said Captain Lang on arriving in Auckland last night. "It wouia have been all right if the night liaa been clear, but everything was obscured. It was more than a gale that hit us. It was a howling hurricane. Almost immediately the jib boom went, the main stay talcing the fore topmast with it. Seas broke over us from every direction, and once I was swept off my feet among the steering chains. The mainsail . was ■ soon blown to ribbons. It was impossible to control her, ana fore and aft we were up to our .waists in water. Ws put up two blue lights' to a trawler for assistance, but evidently she did not notice them. The "gale continued for about twenty minutes, and there was not a sign of. a" light anywEere. After that the weather cleared, although the seas w.ere very heavy, but when things were secured we managed to get the ship before the wind. The wind went round . to the north-west, otherwise goodness knows where we would have ended up.?' "It was not a gale, it was a cyclone,'? said a member of the crew. 'The noise when it hit us was terrific and she just wallowed in the seas. When things cleared we founa we were still right on our- course..'.':... V '

Another member of the crew spoke of the work done by a seaman named Kaye. During the height of the gale when the jib boom was earned away he was over the side before the captain knew he had gone. He was stripped, and the seas were going right over him, but he managed to secure the -jib boom and it was hauled into, the side. At another ctage, too, he.went up the foremast md attended to the broken topmast, entirely regardless of the danger to which he was exposed. The pumps were kept ready for action, but it was not necessary to use them. The Seagull is one of the biggest of the scows which run out of Auckland Built here in 1905, she is 25 tons register,^; 92ft;vin length, and. 27ft, in