TRAGEDY AT A PICNIC.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2390, 9 February 1922, Page 2

TRAGEDY AT A PICNIC.

SIX PEOPLE DROWNED. Greymouth, Feb. 8. Yesterday a train load of people, filling three carriages and 14 waggons, left Reefton for Greymouth, where they resorted to the beach near Tip Head, where a hundred of them went bathing. No warning was given of the dangerous whirls and back-currents that come and go suddenly at times in the vicinity of the rocks leading to Tip Head. About 1.30 p.m. a boy raised the alarm that the current was drowning him, and many others were soon in the same difficulty, being only up to their waists in some eases, but being steadily forced seaward. Men from the shore rushed in, rescuing a number, and a single man named Reeves dived with a board from the tips, and, aided by other men in a boat, got Miss Doris Rivers ashore. A rescue boat was awamped, and one of the four men, Arthur Hutchings, of Greymouth, was drowned. Another lady, Miss Ethel Rivers, was also in the current, but site was rescued: also eleven others, all men and bo vs,

There were no life-saving appliances whatever on the beach, the life-line apparatus having been stolen some time ago.

The missing are: —Leslie O’Donnell, aged 22, single, of Cronadun; Robert Duffy, aged 30, single, of Reefton; George Wilson, aged 18, single, of Reefton; Frank Hart, aged 22, railwayman, of Reefton; Arthur Hutchings, aged 40, single, of Greymouth; Harry Avans, aged 55, a married man, who leaves a wife and six children, of Reefton. Five of the victims thus hailed from Reefton district.

None of the bodies have yet been recovered.