THE GALE AT PORT.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1889, 13 March 1880, Page 3

THE GALE AT PORT.

The gale on Thursday night, Maroh 11th, from the S.W. is reported to have been the hardest blow experienced at Lyttelton for years. The harbor master, who was out in it in the tug steamer Lyttelton from midnight to five o'clock yesterday morning, looking after the vessels in the stream and the shipping in the bay, states that the force of the wind was greater than that of the S.W. gale in June lost, which proved so severe to the shipping. The barometer at half an hour after midnight was at its lowest, 29.24, and the gale was most furious between that time and 2 a.m. The vessels at anchor in the stream, and the brigantine Sarah and Mary at the Heads/with both of their anohors down and extra quantities of cable out, rode out the storm in safety. At eight o'clock yesterday morning the pilot at the Heads reported by telephone that the sea was breaking there fully forty feet high. The brig Wave, bound to Oamaru, was reported at anchor in Port Levy. The circamstance is worth recording that there were thirty vessels occupying berths at the various wharves on Thursday night, their registered tjnnage together being 18,000 tons. Yet in no instance was the effect of the storm felt so as to make it necessary to haul off, nor, so far as has been reported, did any of them incur any damage —not so much as a broken fender or parted rope. Off the wharves and in the bay there were besides sixteen other vessels, to none of which was any injury done by the gale.