Inquest.

Manawatu Herald, 20 July 1895, Page 2

Inquest.

-• m On Thursday morning, the Coroner, E. S. Thynne, Esq., held an inquest touching the death of Walter Fairbank, who was drowned on the Manawatu bar on Wednesday. The proceedings were held in the Courthor.se, though the body rested at the Post Office Hotel. Messrs T. P. Williams (Foreman), J. W. Liddle, H Bradcock, T. Westwood, J. Little and T. V. Proctor formed the jury. The following evidence was taken : -— William Thomas Andrew being sworn saith : I am a labourer living I at Foxton ; I was down at the beach yesterday canoeing up some posts ; ! about half past ten in the morning I j saw the deceased getting a bag of sand for an anchor for his boat, right at the heads on the south beach, j Lenny Cole was close bye in another boat and I saw the two row out to I the bar ; Cole was leading and I noticed the deceased got over the i first two or three breaks all right ; he appeared then to lose manage- J ment of bis boat and turned towards

the north ; he got over tho nitfc two or three breaks and then all of % sudden disappeared ; when I saw tht boat again I could not see anyone in it ; the boat appeared to go down behind several breakers and then it appeared with the deceased in it ; the anchor seemed to be out and the boat was drifting slowly to the south shore ; I beckoned to two men on the sandhills, and after a while the dog which was in deceased's boat came ashdre and then the two men put off in a boat ; they went out and got the deceased into their boat, but seemed to have some trouble in. getting him in ; Leggett, one of the men in the boat, sang out to me to pull to the same shore, the north, they were pulling to; we pulled across as fast as we could and saw the deceased carried on the beach ; when t got to the deceased the man were shaking him about trying to revive him ; Mr Seabury telephoned to Foxton for some one to come down, and after three-quarters of an hour Mr Hamer came down ; he said he believed tbe deceased had been dead about a quarter or half an hour ; we took him up on the beach and covered him with a sail and I then left ; when I beokoned to the men on the sandhills I was standing on a heap of posts on tbe south side of the river ; I could not have taken lhe canoe to the assistance of the deceased, as it would have had HO show in the breakers. By the Foreman : I do not think deceased was alive when he was taken ashore. William Leggett being sworn saith : I am a fisherman living at Manawatu Heads ; between ten and eleven o'clock yesterday morning I paw the deceased in his boat near And reseu 's house and he asked me if I was going outside, and I told him " No," as it was not smooth enough j he pulled down and landed on the south shore ; I next noticed another boat coming down the river which contained three young fellows, Lenny Cole, Tommy Collins and some one else. When deceased saw his boat going out he followed them, and when we saw them making for the bar Jimmy Wilson and myself wsnt on a sandhill to see how they got on. After a few minutes We saw one boat get through the break all | right but couldn't see the other boat. We feared something had happened to the deceased. Jimmy Wilson and myself entered my boat and pulled , for the bar; when we notified dfl* ! ceased's dog cOnic ashore j when We got to the south side of the river two young chaps there told us deceased was holding on to his boat ; we pulled out to him, and found de* ceased iv the boat sitting in the hot-* torn, entangled with the anchor rope ; he was alive ; I said " Give us your hand, Walter" and he lifted one arm up, but did not speak ; we tried to lift him into the boat but a sea ' - came and washed us away from him )$* when we got up to him again we pulle . him into the boat, and pulled to the north shore as fast as ever we could ; when we got as! tore the pilot was there and we asked him to send a telegram and we laid deceased out ou a sail ; wo opened deceased's shirt collar and tried to keep him warm by rubbing his body and also tried to get the water out of him ; I think the deceased was just alive and that was all when we landed on the north shore ; after we had been attending to the deceased about twenty minutes Mr Hamer, the chemist, came down and he said the man had been dead a quarter of an hour. We carried the deceased up the beach and covered him over ; the boat deceased was in was a flat-bottomed boat ; there was too much sea on the har for any open boat to go over with safety. By the Foreman : There would be about five or six feet of water where we found deceased's boat ; the seas were breaking over the boat fore and aft ; it would be about half an hour from the time we saw the other boat clear of the bar to the time we got to the deceased ; it would be worse for those in Cole's boat to try and help the deceased than for us off the * beach ; we placed the deceased in a sitting position between the two seats in our boat. James Wilson being sworn saith : I am a fisherman living at the Manawatu heads ; I have known the deceased Walter Fairbank ever since he came to Foxton, about six or seven years ago ; he told me that he came from Yorkshire ; I do not know how long he had been in the colony ; I do not know if he has any relatives in the colony ; I believe he was un* married ; I corroborate everything the last witness has said ; I think the bar was yesterday unsafe for open boats to cross, and the deceased's boat, a flat-bottomed one, was not fit to go at any time ; Mr Seabury was present when we brought the body ashore and directed us what to ' do to endeavour to resusoitate it. The jury returned a verdict that the deceased met his death by drowning owing to the capsizing of his boat on the Manawatu bar.