RESCUE FROM DROWNING.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2496, 5 January 1877, Page 2

RESCUE FROM DROWNING.

Dangerous Accident.

An accident of a very dangerous nature, but one which might occur more than once on a dark night, especially tojhose unacquainted with the Grahamstown wharf, happened j'esterday evening to a lady. The details are as follows :—The new steamship llotomahana, Captain Farquhar, arrived at Grahamstown last night, between half-past nine and ten o'clock, having been preceded by" the s.a. Durham, which latter vessel was moored alongside the wharf about 100 feet from the end. On board was a lady, Mrs Fisher, from Christchurch with her baby, who was recognised by Captain Farquhar, and as she remained in the steamer after the other passengers had gone ashore, Captain Farquhar asked her if she expected anyone to meet her. She told him that the Key. Mr Bunn would in all probability , come down, but as the time was getting late, Captain Farqubar, unable just then, to leave his vessel, asked the purser, Mr Fraser, to see the lady to the end of the wharf, cautioning her very urgently to keep on the right hand side, where there is a railing. Mr Fraser offered to carry the baby, but Mrs Fisher preferred carrying it herself, and Mr Fraser carried her portmanteau. They had. passed; the Durham and had proceeded about one hundred yards down the wharf, when the lady was alarmed by the noise of an approaching truck, and stepped off the centre of the wharf where she had been walking to the left, instead of to the right of the tramway. Mr Fraser immediately tried to got her back, and succeeded in getting hold of her shawl, but too late to save her, as she fell with her child in her arms over the side of the wharf into the water, which was here some nine or ten feet deep. The alarm was immediately given, and fortunately assistance was nigh at hand, for Messrs May and Kickett lowered themselves down one of the piles of the wbarf, and the former seized the child while the latter sustained Mrs Fisher. The child was passed up to those on the wharf and taken to the Eotomahana where Mrs Farquhar promptly attended to it. A boat in the meantime had beea lowered from the Durham into which Captain Edwards, Captain Farquhar and one of the crew got, and took the two men and Mrs Fisher on board and round to the Kotomahana. Mrs Fisher appeared uninjured, and in spite of the kind offers of dry clothing, &c, preferred to proceed to Mr Bunn's house in Shortland, that gentleman having arrived a few minutes previously. We are glad to hear from further enquiries that Mrs Fisher has not, it is thought, experienced any injury from her accident.