Swamped at Sea

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 302, 13 March 1928, Page 1

Swamped at Sea

CREW OF IKA RETURN SAVED BY THE NIAGARA MELBA’S GENEROSITY “I shall never forget that Monday night. It was terrible. A gale was blowing and the launch was being tossed in every direction by the waves.” That, in a few words, is how one of the men from the launch Ika described the night at sea before he and his companions were picked up by the Niagara on Tuesday, February 28. The three fishermen returned to Auckland to-day by the Maunganui from Sydney. They were Messrs. John Buchan, aged 43, of 5a Union Street., Norman Blackburn, aged 55, of Matamata, and Cyril Ledger, aged 19, of Walters Road, Auckland. Their story is one of a dramatic rescue from an angry sea. On the Monday night a vessel passed within easy call of them, but apparently no one on the vessel saw the three fishermen in their drifting launch. The three men all paid the highest tributes to Captain Hill, of the Niagara, and the passengers. Dame Nellie Melba, who was returning to Sydney, sang to the men and the sum of £IBO was collected from the passengers. She also provided them with clothes. “But for the Niagara we would have been lost,” said Mr. Buchan this morning. “Our anchors were cut away, the sails 'were broken and torn, and the engine had broken down. We made flares with pieces of the torn sail and thus attracted the lookout on the Niagara.” Messrs. Buchan and Ledger have lost everything and have only the money which was collected for them on the Niagara. “It would cost us between £3OO and £4OO to start again. The launch, I believe, is almost a, wreck.” Mr. Buchan is a married man with six children,, and had been out of work for three months before he put everything he had into the launch Ika. The rescued men were treated with the utmost hospitality in Sydney. Part of the money which was collected for them was spent in paying their return fares. It will be remembered that the men were picked up by the Niagara at 9 o’clock on the night of February 28, bout 10 miles off the Hen and Chickens group. They had drifted about 50 miles from Canoe Rock. When the engine broke down on the Monday they tried to make for Tiri, but the sails ripped and then they tried for Kawau, but that also was impossible, and the launch just drifted in the gale