BLOWN TO SEA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 208, 22 January 1913, Page 5

BLOWN TO SEA.

A FATALITY FEARED. By Telegraph—Press Association. Timaru, Last Night. By an unfortunate error of judgment on the part of an old habitue of the river, it is feared that two lives were lost at the Rangitata river mouth today. Charles Nicholas, an elderly man, an old resident of Temuka, a well-known angler, and A. E. Darby, understood to be a Geraldine resident, this morning undertook to cross part of the Rangitata river, near one of its mouths, in a flat-bottomed boat. Nicholas had ferried one man over, and was fetching over Darby when he was overpowered by the current and carried out to sea. An off-shore breeze was blowing, and the boat was carried a long way out to sea. Word was telephoned to Timaru, and the harbormaster, Captain Tait, went out in the Board's motor launch to the rescue, starting at 1 p.m. He reached the river at 3.30. and zig-zagged about for some time southward, but saw nothing of the boat. In the afternoon the wind changed, and he concluded that with such a breeze the boat must have drifted asiiore if she had not been swamped and lost. There was no sign of the occupants ashore. The people at Rangitata thought the launch did not go as far out as where the boat was last seen. There was a considerable breeze and a strong jobble all the morning