The Sydney Boating Fatality.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 124, 23 November 1895, Page 2

The Sydney Boating Fatality.

o (Per s.s. Manapouri at the Bluff.) Sydney, Nov. 16. The boating mishap which occurred just outside Port Jackson Heads on Sunday afternoon resulted in the death of three youths — Arthur Peck, 17 years, grocer's assistant ; Wellington Vitelli, 18, grocer ; and Charles Bulgan, 17, chemist's assistant. Willis Hall, aged 17, grocer's assistant, was also one of the party. They started from Rush Cutter's Bay in an open sailing boat for a day's pleasure. The morning was hot, clammy, and oppressive, and they ventured outside the Heads in their boat and journeyed to a little inlet up the coast, where they had dinner. The return trip was commenced in seemingly most favorable circumstances, but just within the shadow of the Heads the faint north-westerly breeze suddenly dropped, and a few moments after a southerly buster came raging along, stripping trees and blowing up dense clouds of dust in the city, and raising a fierce sea outside the Heads. The party in the boat, after a vain effort to beat up against the fierce squalls decided to turn and run back to their camping place for shelter, but whilst attempting to jibe the boat capsized. Bulgan sank at once, and was seen no more. Vitelli was carried away by the waves, and was also lost. Hall could not swim a stroke, so simply clutched the boat and watched the shore, which was only some 500 yards distant. Peck stripped, and attempted to swim ashore. Half-way to land the sight of great waves beating on the steep wall of rocks seemed to scare him, for he turned back to regain the boat, but the swim against wind and waves was too much. He also succumbed. Young Hall meanwhile clung to the boat. Not beiug a swimmer he was not tempted to leave it. After being buffetted by the waves for about two hours and three-quarters, he was rescued in a very oxhauatcd couditiou by two fishermen, but soon revived sufficiently to tell the story of the accident, Hall states that had he beeu left a few moments longer he also would have been lost. — Post correspondent.