THE LOST WARATAH

Shannon News, 15 September 1925, Page 4

THE LOST WARATAH

STRANGE TRAGEDY OF THE SEA

Many vessels, sailing ships and j whatnot have left port'—and that has | been the end, the word- "Missing” being their own epitaph (says a northern writer). But, for a great steamer like the Waratah, while in presumably easy sight of land, to disappear without leaving a trace is a mystery indeed. Yet that is briefly the story of the Waratah. She was no tramp knocked together anyhow, but a full-powered liner, built in 1908 by Barclay, Curie and Company; she passed five inspections, including that of 100 A 1 at Lloyd’s. She left Durban on July 16, 1909, bound for Capetown and England, and was spoken the next morning by a slow steamer which she overhauled; passing on she dipped below the horizon, the last faint curls of smoke as seen by the other vessel being the last ever seen of her. A tremendous storm raged the next day; that was nothing of itself; other vessels on the passage met and weathered it. No one will ever'know what actually happened to her. Expert evidence —including that <>f Sir Wm. White, constructor to the Navy—was brought. This showed that her designs and “figures” gave an ample reserve of stability. Others again, passengers mostly, spoke of her crankiness and capacity to roll. There seems certainly one suspicious bit of evidence, the report that her officers had said she was ijot as stiff as she might be. She had a list also: that docs not necessarily mean much. Many of us can remember the Union Steam Ship Company’s boat Rotorua, running between Wellington and Nelson—a very pretty model —but nothing would make her sit up straight. Like Admiral Beatty, she persisted in wearing her hat over one eye—but there was no question as to her stability or weatherliness.

The ocean in its majestic rage is a terrible thing, but at least, whatever else may happen, Father Neptune sends as evidence of his wrath many bits of flotsam and jetsam floating ashore. Nearly 200 souls were aboard the Waratah, but nothing has ever been picked up of this lost ship. It will be remembered how, in 1899, the steamer Waikato brok e down and drifted about in these latitudes for months. With the memory of this long drift and with the chance that the Waratah was still afloat, the steamer Sabine followed in the same direction covering altogether 1,000 miles in her search. Nothing was ever found and there the matter rests, one of the mysteries of the sea.