AN ECHO FROM THE DUNDONALD.

Otago Witness, Issue 2812, 5 February 1908, Page 37

AN ECHO FROM THE DUNDONALD.

CFsom Our Own Correspondent.) CHRISTCHURCH, January 27. An echo from the wreck of the Dundonald was heard at the meeting of the Board of Governors of Canterbury College to-day. It was in connection with the proceeds of the exhibitions of the wonderful coracle in which the survivors got away from Disappointment Island that the chairman of the board (Mr G. W. Russell) made a statement. The chairman said that the coracle had been exhibited at Dunedin under the auspices of the New Zealand Shipwreck Relief Society, at the request of the Mayor (Mr Loudon), who stated that any money raised would be subsidised £1 for £1 by the Government. The exhibition at Timaru was on the same lines, and a total of £30 1L? 4d was raised. He failed to get a reply from the society asking if the survivors would benefit by the Government subsidy, but the Mayor of Dunedin informed him that after paving expenses £18 7s was handed over to the society, which pix>poaed to divide the amount amongst the survivors, and to hand their shares to all the survivors who could be reached, the unolaimed balance to remain in the funds of the society. It was also aeked that the amount collected in Christchurch should be forwarded. All that appeared to have been done by tho society, the chairman continued, was that the cost of the clothes supplied by the society had been paid out of the proceeds of the exhibitions, and that what had to be done was to give their share to those men that the society could find. He had written to the Mayor statinar that he felt so dissatisfied with what the society had done that he had sent the money collected in this city to Mr Hutton, of tho Sailors' Rest at the Bluff, whose energy •in assisting the unfortunate men was in very marked contrast to what had been done by the society. He had received from Mr Hutton the European addresses of all the survivors of the Dundonald, and he had requested him to send to each his portion of tho money collected in Christchurch. He regretted, ho added, to be compelled to criticise the society, but he felt that a society that held money for the assistance of shipwrecked sailors for five or six weeks before meet ins: to consider what was to be done with it, and called itself a Shipwreck Relief Society, and nowproposed to distribute the money to those of the survivors it could reach, was one 4hat did not deserve what Canterbury College had done for it, and he regretted, as chairman of the Board of Governors, that he ever allowed the funds collected to be handed over to the society, instead of at once putting the money into the hands of those for whom it was raised.

No 'comment was made on the statement made by the chairman, and the matter dropped.