STRANDING OF THE JESSIE READMAN.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2605, 9 January 1894, Page 3

STRANDING OF THE JESSIE READMAN.

The s.s. Kahu, Captain Romerill, arrived at Lyttelton on Sunday night from the Chatham Islands, bringing the news of the wreck of the Jessie Readnian. The following particulars were obtained :

The barque Jessie Readman left Napier for London on the 20th December last with a cargo of wool. She struck on a sandy beach at the Chathams off Taupeka at 4 a.m. on the i.*3rd December. The weather, at the time was very thick and misty, and she was set in there by a very strong northerly current of which the captain knew nothing. At the time she grounded Captain Burton reckoned he was south of Pitt's Island. The spit where she struck is a sandy beach, about two and a-half miles south of where the ship Ocean Mail was wrecked ten years ago. The crew are engaged in dischargiug the wool by means of a wire rope from the yard arm to the shore, the wool then being carted to the settlement at Taupeka. Some 400 bales had been got out when the Kahu left on Thursday last. It is expected all the cargo will be saved. The ship herself is high and dry on the beach, and is making very little water, while what does get in can be kept down by the pumps. At low water the men can go on board the vessel by means of a ladder, and the only damage that it cm be discovered at present that she has sustained is an injury to one of her rudder gudgeons. The Captain of the Kahu, Captain Romerill, states that he thinks if the proper appliances were available the ship might be floated off. The Jessie Readman is an iron vessel of 962 tons, and was built r.t Greenock in 1869 by Soott & Co., being an old and well-known trader between London and New Zealand. She is owned by Shaw, Savill and Albion Company, and her agents were Dalgety and Co. Her cargo on the present trip consisted of 4184 bales and seventy-six pockets of wool shipped at Napier, and sixty casks of pitch shipped at Wellington. Cf the wool 2193 bales were shipped by Messrs Williams and Kettle, 1137 bales by Messrs Murray, Roberts and Co., 103 bales by Mr W. K. White, 751 bales and seventy-six pockets by Messrs Dalgety and Co. —Press.