TWO YOUNG LADIES DROWNED.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 18, 19 January 1876, Page 2

TWO YOUNG LADIES DROWNED.

Our telegrams recently reported the death by drowtiing at the "Wanganui ■ Heads of two young ladies named Miss Laura Hackett and Miss Maggie | Carlyle— not Miss Bushel! as : < graphed. The reporter of the Chronicle thus reports what he saw on his arrival at the scene of the accident, and the ' preceding events: — Laid out on the beach, with a boat sail spread underneath, and partly covering them, wese the two bodies, who a few hours before had been animated beings and in the full possession of health and spirits. Beside them were the survivors, Miss Haekett, the sister of one of the drowned, and Mrs Carlyle, the mother of the other. Both were inconsolable in their heartbreaking grief and it waR only in broken disjointed sentences, intermingled " with sobs and tears, that they were able to furniah me with a narration of the melancholy accident. It would appear that about three o'clock in the afternoon they had all been bathing at a spot much lower ,down the beach than where the two were drowned, and were returning to where their clothes were lying on the beach, when the deceased Mias Hackett complained of feeling chilly. They bad then been in the water for about an hour, when Miss Hackett remarked— "l { think, Laura, you have been in long enough ; you had better come out;" Mrs Carlyle also remarking— " Yes, you girls had better both come out, yon are not accustomed to being in the water " It may be here stated that Mrs Carlyle, who is a comparative stranger in Wanganui. being a widow lady, and a recent arrival from Westporfc, is a magnificent swimmer, and frequently Miss Hackett bad been startled by exclamations from her younger sister — " Oh, ! look how Mrs Carlyle can swim and dive/ However, after being warned by each of the other ladies that they had been in the water long enough, and that they had better not return— to which had they attended we should not have had to record the fatal occurrence— both again walked into the water, the deceased Miss Laura Hackett exclaiming, " Oh! come in here, Sarah, the water is so nice "and warm." Miss Hackett at this time was walking onwards— her back being towards her three companions— with the intention of dressing, when an exclamation from her little brother, who was not far off, caused her to look round. She then saw that both had disappeared, and that Mrs Carlyle was masing frantic efforts to secure them. Miss Hackett says she stood transfixed with horror, unable to scretm for help or to render the slightest assistance to her struggling companions. The deceased seized a firm hold of each other, and Mrs Carlyle made almost superhuman at-' tempts to save them, all the time directing them what to do, as well as she was able in the terrible confusion of the moment, and encouraging them to hold out, and not despair, as she would rescue them if she could. A few awful moments succeeded, the mother frantically calling upon her child to keep her presence of mind, and not let go her hold of her companion, and she would Bave them both, Twice was the self-sacrificing mother dragged down to the bottom of the eddying whirlpool into which the unfortunate girls had slipped imperceptibly, each time being unable to release herself for several seconds, and again diving after her drowning companions, now rapidly becoming insensible. The narrative of the incidents immediately preceding the final attempt at rescne, of the actual manner in which the attempt was made, and of the compulsory yet terribly reluctant withdrawal from further effort, which might result in her own death — as each of the previous times she had seized hold of them she had experienced increased difficulty in releasing the deadly grasp of despair with which they held her— is here naturally a litt'e confused, as both the survivors were so overcome with grief when relating the last hopeless struggle that I could not further intrude upon tbeir sorrow, and left them keeping watch over the remains of those once near and dear to them —the living and the dead on the silent beach. Few could witness such a scene unmoved, and a more saddening picture of life's woes it would be hard to imagine. I next visited the place where the two young ladies had met their mornful end. When I reached the spot the tide had begun to make, and waa ruebiDg in boiling eddies and broken whirlpools over the lodge where a few hours ago the unfortunate girls had sunk to rise no more, I was accompanied by John Jenkins, who gave me a vivid description of the alarm, and the search for and recovery ot the bodies. It would appear that he knew of the danger incurred by the thoughtless bathers, of the extent which they themselves were evidently unaware, and had sent down a lad to warn them of the treacherons nature of the locality which they had selected for their b«thing place— just underneath the flagßtaff— shelves down at about an angle of 60 degrees, and is surrounded by quicksands formed by the numerous eddies, induced by the rapid, rushing current. At low water, at a distance of three feet from the edge, there is a depth of ten feet of water, which rapidly deepens to twelve and fourteen feet. And here it was that the deceased incautiously wandered in, and were Bucked down in its treacherous depths, almost within arm's length of the beach. On each occasion when Jenkins despatched the lad down to warn the haters, had they waved him back, and so the all important information of which he was the bearer was never communicated. But shortly afterwards they were observed to have gone further down the beach, whore there were no dangerous reefs or lodges with their intervening currents ane whirlpools, and the uneasiness of the men at the station was - re- j l'eved when they knew that no danger was to be apprehended where they were then disporting in the surf. It was on returning that their fad fate overtook them, as they bad again selected the highly dangerous spot for their bathing pUce. The alarm wa3 first given by one of the men employed in painting the flagstßff, who saw, but could not assist in, the terrible struggle. With praiseworthy energy the boat was launched, and no grapnel being at hand, the boathook was used, but ineffectually, the depth of the water being too great, and the rush of the current haviog carried the bodies into a still deeper part of the bed of tbe rirer. So deep was the water here— scarcely a boat's length from the edge— that bottom could not be reached with one of the fifteenfeet oars. A bar of iron waa then obtained, & number of fishhooks procured, and after several attempts a firm hold was secured of the bodies, and they were raised to the surface, both legs and arms being firmly intertwined with those of each other ; and thus firmly bound together, as in the last struggle in which their lives had ebbed away, so they remained after the King of Terrors had claimed them as his own.