A VETERAN CAPTAIN.

Gisborne Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1455, 16 May 1905, Page 3

A VETERAN CAPTAIN.

PRESENTATION TO CAPTAIN N. WHEELER.

'(Pec Press Asaocia’ti’en.-) Wellington, last night. A few days ago Cap'ain N. Wheeler,

formerly of the Union Steam Ship Company, celebrated his 75th birthday, and at a meeting of the Shipmasters’ Association of New Zealand to-day he was presented with a purse of sovereigns in commemoration of the event.

Accompanying the presentation was a letter, in whioh the following passage occurred:—“ Your many storling qualities and upright character have won for you the esteem and regard of your brother shipmasters throughout the colony, and it is felt that some slight mark of the regard in whioh you are held may bo appreciated by yourself as an expression of good feeling and appreciation of one who, during the course of a long and honorable career, has upheld the status of the cloth.”

I Captain Wheeler, in replying, gave an interesting review of the trials of master mariners in the early days. ■ He arrived in New Zealand as ohief offioer of the s.s. Lord Ashley in 1858, and he recollected well the difficulties which the captain of that vessel experienced in picking up the | light at Nelson. There was then pnly two | lights on the New Zealand coast—one at Wellington, and tho other at Nelson—ancl they were not to be oompared to the lights whioh were now to be found on the New Zealand coast. Passengers in those days listle knew what an anxious time the captain of a vessel had iu reaching his destination, and he thought it spoko volumes for the oare and skill exercised that so few mishaps had occurred. All the time he had been running on the coast he had never met with a serious mishap, and had never lost a life.