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Grey River Argus, Volume XV, Issue 1837, 25 June 1874, Page 2

Operations were commenced yesterday morning by Mr J. Kilgour and a strong gang of laborers to lift the s.s Waipara over the South Beach into the lagoon. As we mentio"e I ye j ierday, the Town Surveyor h.;s determined that the crown of the beach shall not be cut away or interfered with in any way more than is unavoidable, so that the Waipara will have to be lifted a considerable height before' she can be launched iuto the lagoon. Logs, screws, &c, were being conveyed to the .scene of operations yesterday, and there is no doubt that the Waipara will once more be soon in smooth water. On the morning tide of yesterday the steamer was quite alive, and had the hauling tackle, which has now been supplied, been available, the chances are that she would have by this time been lifted much further up the bank, and thus have reduced the work of launching. Last night's tide, although much smaller than the last, had the effect of forging the steamer about 15ft further towards the crown of the spit. We believe it is the intention of the Collector of Customs to hold an inquiry into the circumstances of the stranding of the vessel to-day. The s.s Otago is due here to-morrow from Nelson, and will sail for Melbourne direct. In Iron, an English newspaper principally devoted to the interests of the metal which its name represents, I find the following paragraph . — '• A lady passenger, writing to a St. Louis paper, says she crossed the Atlantic during the past summer in the Ville dv Havre, and she pronounces the vessel to have been a rotten hulk not fit to float." She also makes the following extraordinary statement :— "" I scuttled the ship in half a dozen different places with hair pins and paper cutters. I tell the unexaggerated truth when I say that lying on the sofa in the state cabin I dug into the puuky wood two or three inches away from the port-hole with a paper-knife till I struck the glazing of thin iron which forms the outer coat."

Intelligence was received in Dunedin, on the 15th inst., to the effect that the stern -wheel steamer Tuapeka had again sunk in the Molyneux. This steamer nad only received a thorough overhaul, consequent upon the effects of a previous immersion at the beginning of the year, and was then considered to be as good as ever. At a meeting of the Seaman's Orphan Institute, held at Liverpool on March 27th, Mr James Beasley stated that he had received aome figures from the Board of Trade, snowing that a very large increase had taken place in the number of sailors who had died at sea during last year as compared with previous years. Ouring the last four years 18,363 deaths of British seamen had occurred either abroad or at sea, and these represented 12,253 sailors' widows and 36.726 orphans. _^J^§^cre^^^mj fal^^^f~ pleted her second trip across the Pacific, in both cases having made the quickest passages on record, although she has had to oppose the vessels of the American Pacific Mail Company, the largest and beat equipped mail line sailing under the American flag, and largely subsidised by the American Government to insure speed. On her. second voyage Bhe accomplished the distance between San Francisco and Yokohama in seventeen .days two hours, being more than two days in advance of any passage on record The f econd vessel, the Vancouver, has left London to take up her station. Thess vessels have been specially built for the company by Messrs HeDderson, Coulborn, and Co., of Renfrew, who are rapidly pushing on with others, and a monthly line will shortly he established between Hong Kong, Yokohama, and San Fraucisco. A connection will also be formed by smaller steamers between Shanghai and Yokohama, and in a few months wo may confidently expect correspondence by this route in thirty-six days from Shanghai, and thirty-; three from Yokohama.— London and China I Telegraph ■ . '■

Satisfactory telegraphic communications have -passed between the directors of 'the Auckland Steam Packet Company and the Hon. the Premier on the question of additionally subsidising the steamer plying between Auckland and Fiji. The result of the communication is, that arrangements have been effected by which an interim service has been established consisting of four trips, one in every six weeks, the steamer starting from Port Chalmers, and calling at Lyttelton, Wellington, and Napier, thence to Auckland, and then on to Fiji, from which place she returns to Auckland and goes down South, calling at the intermediate ports between this and Port Chalmers as above enumerated. The subsidy for the first trip is L4OO, and L3OO for each of the three others, the reduction being made by Mr Yogel on these latter on account of the probable increase of the trade which will follow the first trip under the new arrangement. ; The .Star of the South is the boat agreed upon to perform the service ; and probably by the time this interim arrangement is comploted, a new and larger steamer, of a class sufficient to visit New Caledonia and the Samoan Islands, will be ready for service. "Southern Cross.