THE S.S. AUSTRAL.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1306, 7 April 1883, Page 4

THE S.S. AUSTRAL.

Tub following harrowing details of tliti wreck of the Austral we take from » Melbourne paper. The part of the ship referred to, it will ho seen by the context, is thu main deck It was in this part of tho ship that the refrigerating engineer, Mr Thomas Alexander, perished. He and the electrician occupied the same cabin. Thu latter was the first to awake after the alarri had been given, and springing out of bed he mangled to get the cabin door open and make his escape along the pusages, but M f Alexander, who does net appear to havb awoke at the same time was hemmed in by the floods and drowned. The position of the cabin on the main deck in whfob the purser) Mr James Perkins, was, is such that one would suppose its occupant would have been among the first to escape, as he had merely to step out to the main deck and jump off the ship. According to information whiff' has been obtained since the disaster, the put tor's death appears to have been a peoulerlr sad one. The doctor, who ooonpiea the adjoining cabin, was among the first to hea!' the alarm. He immediately ran into thu purser's cabin and dragged him out of bed They were on tho etarboard side, iu which directions the ship was heeling over, and one glance over the side told the doctor that not a moment was to be lost. He warned his companion to hasten with him, but the latter—who was in his night clothes—re l . plied that he would just have time to snatch up some additional clothing. As the purser rushed back into ids cabin. What occurred after the doctor left him is matter of conjecture. The generally accepted version is that after he went back to the cabin and closed the door after him while he hurried! - dressed himself the water came over tk < ship’s side, and dammed up the door, that when he made an effort to come out again he found it impossible to move the . door (which opened outwards) owing to the tremendous flood. The cabin wu watertight up to the top of the door, where there was a small iron grating for ventilation purposes. The apartment would therefore be free from tho flood until the ship sank to the level of this iron grating, when the water would force itself gradually in. There, probably, the unfortunate man, as he sat in his chair, hemmed in by the seething flood which was rapidly sinking the ship, saw the water stream in at 1 the grating, and rise inch by inch in the cabin, until he was overwhelmed in a living tomb. The three Arabs, who, besides Mr Alex- - andcr and Mr Perkins, were the only persons I lost, also slept (in apartments on the main deck. They, too, were probably similarly hemmed in, and unable to force open the ' doors. When the ship settle down to the level of the ventilators tho water would pour into the apartments, and the occupants would perish like rata in a hole. Some of the men connected with the ship, who slept below the main deck, owed their lives in all probability to the fact that, it being a warm 1 night, they had left their portholee open. ’ They were thus aroused at the first alarm, and were able to escape before the inrushing water flooded the passengere and t stairways. . The general supposition that the magnificent machinery of tho veseel would be destroyed is fortunately not borne out by an actual examination. Much of the machinery may be somewhat injured, but so far as it is possible to judge, it will only be necessary to give it a thorough cleaning and overhauling, and take some portions of it pieces.