RAISING OF THE " TARANAKI."

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IV, Issue 152, 1 July 1869, Page 3

RAISING OF THE " TARANAKI."

The operations for raising the steamship Taranaki, sunk in Tory Channel, are. about to commence. The Ladybird which has been chartered by the Wreck Recovery Company to carry the material to the spot and act as a tender while the raising is going on, is now loading material at the Queen's Wharf, and will sail early to-morrow morning. The N.Z.S.N. Company send a captain, and so far retain charge of the Ladybird, but the crew and everything else is found by the Wreck Recovery Company. Two experienced divers are provided with abundance of the most, improved gear, and by some new process of letting the diver down in an iron cage, where his tools, &c, will be placed besido his hand, he will not require to go deeper than the level of the port holes, and will be saved the toilsome and dangerous work of using ladders and walking over rough stones incumbered with sea-weed at the bottom, and descending beyond a safe depth. The method to be adopted for grappling the sunken vessel, put forward by Mr. Seager, has beeu highly approved of by Mr. Balfour, the Marine Engineer, and it is singular that it is identical with tbafc used in raising the Wolf, a large steamer sunk in Dublin Bay, and which was mentioned in the English papers as something entirely novel, at thefyery time that plans of this process, prepared by Mr. Seager, were lying in the N.Z.S.N. Co.'s offices. The punts on the other side of the Straits are Jready, the actual wori of raising will commence in about a week, and except some untoward accident occurs will be finished in a month. The Company has already expended nearly £2000 on the enterprise, which we sincerely trust will be successful, not only for their own sakes but for the credit of the Province, which, with its limited means, can provide the materials for raising a large vessel— an undertaking which has so often proved unsuccessful under more favourable circumstances. — Evening Post. A French auditor of accounts in the seventeenth century was a great practical joker all his life, and even played a trick after ho had lost the power of enjoying it ; for he left four large candles to be carried at his funeral, which had not been burning fifteen minutes before they went off as fireworks. A Gentleman travelling in a railway carriage was amused by a constant fire of words between two ladies. One of them at last kindly enquired if their conversation did sot make his head ache, when he answered with a good deal of ingenuousness, "No, ma'am, I've been 'married 20 years." An Exhibitoe of wild beasts in Paris has adopted a plan for securing his money which is respectfully submitted to bankers and bondholders generally. Every night he deposits the daily receipts of his exhibition in the cage of the most ferocious of his animals, and he has never lost a cent.