THE MISSING WARATAH

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 194, 20 September 1909, Page 1

THE MISSING WARATAH

A STRONG INDICTMENT.

Tlie narrative of Mr. Claude G. Sawyer, one of the passengers who joined the -Waratah at Sydney for London, and who abandoned the vessel on arrival at Durban, was received at Sydney by a South African mail recently. Mr. Sawyer, who is a director of various public i companies, visited Australia on a business mission, and is well-known in South Africa. After leaving the Waratah at Durban he embarked on the liildonan Castle, and on reaching Capetown said:' "During the first portion of the voyage the weather was somewhat rough, but nothing of any consequence. The hitter portion of the voyage was extremely fine, and although the captain anticipated rough weather on approaching the longitude of Mauritius, his expectation was not fulfilled, and we experienced beautiful weather. I had intended going on to Capetown with the ship. " It was about ten days before we ar-

rived at Durban that I decided to leave

the ship, because I was not quite satistied with her, and the way in which she behaved; siic pitched and rolled, as the case •might be, so dead; she was anything but lively. She recovered herse'll very slowly, and stayed in the position in which she was then rolling or pitching for a long while before recovering. I even- spoke about the rolling to om of the olficers; on another occasion J spoke to a passenger, a solicitor, of Melbourne, who conducts most of the leading, shipping cases there—Mr. Ebsworth —and who had dlso been a sailor am: oH'iccr for seven ears. I spoke to him about the rolling, We decided one da) accordingly, to watch the Warataii's behaviour. It was a calm, fine day, with big rollers coming straight towards us, going fore and aft. Whenever a particularly big roller came the ship did not take it as she snould have done, but put her nose right into it and remained there, apparently without -any life in her. .Mr. Ebsworth was, J thought, rather upset, and said that it was the lirs't time in the whole of his experience that he had seen a ship do ;his. I often watched this afterwards, :iud several times told other passengers that I wished I were oil' her, the last time I said so being to a Mr. Muller, when we were within sight of Durban on the Sunday morning. "Several times during the voyago 1 looked at the list of the passengers, as distributed by the captain amongst Uhe various boats in case of an t.utr,'cncy. Mine wns Xo. 4 with Morgan, duller, and with the third officer in charge, and on drill day J. saw that our ;ioat had a water-cask. However, il the ship turned turtle there would not of course, have been any time to get the boats out. On that account I made the change, at Durban, and 1 tried to persuade several other passengers to do the s'ame. Several times after leaving Sydney I thought she was higher out of the water .than any other ship I had seen, except one. At Port Adelaide it struck ine that lier bow was deeper in the water than her stern. I saw her coming in, and she took an hour and a quarter to get alongside. What I) specially noticed was "now she bumped the wharf while pushed by the tender. What passed through my mind was that the momentum of 20,000 tons at tfoe rate of a foot a second on a small spot in the ■middle of the ship was not very nice. Afterwards I heard Captain Ilbery remark that he did net like the bumps. "After leaving Adelaide the ship rolled a good deal, occasionally giving several of the. passengers severe falls. One morning, on my way to the bathroom, my steward remarked that she had been rolling heavily during the night, to which .

replied that I had not noticed it, as hail slept well, but while in my bath

1 was astonished to see tile water suddenly take an angle, apparently over 45 degrees, and remain there so long that it brought to ray mind what befell H.M.S. Captain in the Bay of Biscay. I spoke to one of the officers and asked liim what angle it registered. He said he did not know, whereupon I asked him if he had art> instrument on the bridge, to which he replied that they bad not, but the builder had scon to this and he supposed it was all right."