IN SUB-ANTARCTIC SEAS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 7, 9 January 1915, Page 7

IN SUB-ANTARCTIC SEAS.

The Australian authorities’ request that the New Zealand Government shouuld send a steamer to assist in the search for a trawler, the Endeavour, which is Jong overdue at Melbourne from Macquarie Island, is a reminder of the sinister maritime record associated with that lonely and gale-swept sub-Antarctic island far to the south of our southernmost coast limit. Down in the “Roaring Fifties,” where Macquarie lies, the most terrific seas ever encountered by sailors run with an uninterrupted scend that completely circles the globe in in those latitudes. Ship captains who have visited this penguin isle say that rollers there are more formidable than any met with rounding Cape Horn. These seas have been known to overwhelm vessels completely or to sweep a whole watch overboard. A little over twenty years ago, a small steamer, the Kakanui, which had been dispatched from the Bluff on a voyage to Macquarie to relieve some penguin oil hunters, foundered with all her passengers and crew on the return trip. The ketch Gratitude was returning from the island to the Bluff when a huge sea swept over her and took with it the man at the whebl and the two other sailors on deck; they were never seen again. A passenger on the vessel at the time was the late Mr A. Hamilton, curator of the Dominion Museum, whose son recently spent 12 months on Macquarie as one of the scientific party of an Antarctic expedition.