SURF TRAGEDY.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 February 1922, Page 5

SURF TRAGEDY.

SIX PERSONS DROWNED. MANY OTHERS IN DIFFICULTY. A TREACHEROUS SP.OT. SAD END TO PICNIC. By Telegraph. Press Association Greymouth, Last Night. A terrible drowning tragedy, in which six picnickers were drowned, is reported. The missing are: Leslie O’Donnell, single, aged 22, of Cronadun. Robert Duffey, aged 30, single, of Reefton. George Wilson, aged 18, of Reef ton. Frank Hart, aged 22, railwayman, of Reefton. Arthur Hutchings, aged 40, single, of Greymouth. Harry Evans, aged 55, a married man with a wife and six children, of Reef ton.

When at an early hour yesterday a train load of people, filling three carriages and fourteen wagons, left Reefton their high spirits were unclouded by apprehensions that the day was to close for them with a terrible tragedy. They resorted to the beach near the Tip Head, where a hundred went bathing. There appears to have been nobody to warn the visitors of the dangerous whirls and back currents that come and go suddenly at times in the vicinity of the rocks leading to the Tip head. About 1.30 a boy raised an alarm that the current was drowning him, Many others were soon in the same difficulty, being only up to their waists in some cases, but steadily forced seaward. Men from the shore rushed in, rescuing a number. A single man named Reeves dived with a board from the Tip, and, aided by other men who came in a boat to the breakers from the river, got Mils Doris Rivers ashore with another boat. The first rescue boat was swamped, and one of the four men, Arthur Hutchings, of Greymouth, was drowned. Miss Ethel Rivers was also in the current, but was quickly rescued, as also were eleven others, all men and boys. However, five could not be accounted for, they having been carried far out and drowned. One man tried to swim round the Tip into the river and was quickly drowned. At one time fourteen were in difficulties, while four more lay on the beach exhausted, having just been able to get ashore.

There were no life-saving appliances whatever on the beach, the life line apparatus having been stolen sorri# time ago. Hence, apart from swimmers who risked their lives in entering the treacherous current the only hope was to secure boats. Half a mile out a fishing boat, was anchored, but, like other boats that came later, it could not come into the breakers.

Several of the rescuers were exhausted. They battled for half an hour. They were strangers, and, not knowing the beach, they had little chance once they got out far.

None of the bodies have been recov ered.