THE BUNINYONG COLLISION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIX, Issue 8140, 18 May 1906, Page 3

THE BUNINYONG COLLISION.

DELAY IN LAUNCHING BOATS. THE STEAMER'S DAMAGE. Contradictory statements are xnade (says the Sydney Morning Herald) with regard to the launching of the boats of the Buninyong after the uollsion, but from inquiries made it appears that the whole of the passengers were rescued by tbe boats of other ships. One of tbe paseengers Mr David Murray, of Scotland, who with his wife is visiting Sydney for the first time, the two boats first on the Boene were manned ty Germans from a ship lying in Neutral Bay, and had RESCUED ALL THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN ' long before tbe boats of the Buninyong were launched. The remainder of tbe passengers were taken off by the steam pinnaoe of H.M.s. Powerful, and by the police launch Argus. Not a single soul of the 150 on board was taken ashore by the Buninyong's boats. The order to prepare the lifefcoats, Mr David Mraray says, was given at seventeen minutes oast seven p.m., and at twenty minutes to eight they had not been launched. The exact time occupied in LAUNCHING THE LIFEBOAT oa the starboard side aft waß 23 minutes. There were no blue lights oa board to be used as signals of dis tress, and tie members of the crew, particularly the firemen, were not amenable to discipline. Everything, he asserts, was in a state of the greatest confusion, and although the electric lights had been extinguished as a reButt of the collision, no lamps or candles were obtainable on board. Aboard one could realise what a terrifying tbing the collision must have been. The top portion of the mainmast, snapped like a twig, hang forward from where the stays were secured; the funnel, wrenched from tbe very uptake on the boilers, was torn beyond recognition, one big section lying clear across the after-boat on tbe port side were DAMAGED PAST USEFULNESS

one being to all intents and purposes a mete heap o]| tplintered matc'iwood. Only two davit posts remained standing, and one of tfiese staunch upright! was bent qad twisted as though it bad been but a leaden pipe. The other two had been snapped off short, and lay .among a confused head of wreckage on the deck. The nose of the OrifEul smashed into this' as well as the boat just above, and forced the fruit oases against the superstruetrue of the engine-room. Smashed cases, pulped apples,

SPLINTERED WOODWORK of the boats, battered ventilators, twisted pipes, ami tackle and aeotions of shattered skylights were piled in awesome confusion. Below this to the water-line, there was a gaping hole, through wbiub men walked on to the lighter alongside as though an open doorway. ' The exact print of the nose of the Uriffel is left in tbo plates, and it shows that she did not strike the Busiayong at right angles, that she was pointing h little astem—.*a fact which, in the view of tome, indioates that the steamer did not catuh the tow-rope, but that the line being so long bad a big sag in it, and the Bumnyong was scraping over it when the Criffel came up. They argue, that had the steamer hit the rope and pulled upon it, the nose of the Orilfel would have tended in tba direction the steamer was going, instead of,>. as the marks indicate, the opposite direction. This view is supported by the position of the funnel, which fell TOWARDS THE STERN when hit by the bowsprit or a yard of the Criffel- It was suggested, by the way, that the force of the impact caused tbe funnel to come toppling down, but tbe very nature of jt& damage shows that it was carried away by something; and, further, if only the impact caused its downfall it would have toppled in direction whepce the force came as did the top of tbe mainmast.