DROWNED AT SEA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 29 July 1907, Page 2

DROWNED AT SEA.

INQUIRY INTO THE CIRCUMSTANCES. Per Press Association. Dunedin, July 27. An inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death on the 16th inst. of Joseph Thomas Hughes, an A.B. on the schooner Waratah, was begun tbjg morning before Mr Graham, S.M. The schooner was bound for Dunedin from the north, and was encountering heavy weather, when Hughes waß washed overboard, her position then being sixty miles east of Oamaru. Mr Hanion applied for an adjournment, saying lie had been advised by telegram to appear on behalf of Captain Running, and he could not cross-examine witnesses (if their evidence implicated the master in any. way), in the absence of instructions. The magistrate decided to take the evidence available. The inquiry, he remarked, was held because a question had been raised as to whether sufficient protection had been provided on the vessel to prevent the man falling overboard. The man was supposed to have been in the galley at the time. The weather door was shut, and the lee door open. The sea was supposed to have broken in on one side, and Hughes was washed out at the lee door. The' theory was that he was washed below the rail, and

Hie question was whether there was sufficient protection there. After evidenco was called, the inquiry was adjourned sine die, bo that Captain Running, who is out of town, might give evidence.