KIA ORA WRECK ENQUIRY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8481, 9 July 1907, Page 6

KIA ORA WRECK ENQUIRY.

By Telegraph—Press Association. AUCKLAND, July 8. When the Kia Ora wreck enquiry resumed, Morris, who was at the wheel during the first watch, made voluntarily the following statement: —"When I came from Onehunga I was taken to Mr Mays' offke. From what Mr Mays said to me, I understood the mate had confessed that he was drunk. I cannot tell the proper words he said. And also that the chief steward had committed perjury, and wanted to confess that he served the mate with drink." Mr Mays, counsel representing the Crown, interjected: "That is absolutely untrue. If the court will give me an opportunity, I will deny it on oath." Pressed to state the exact words used by Mr Mays, Morris said he could not do so, but he repeated what he had previously said, and added: "Then Mays said—'No sailor tricks; tell us all you know about it.' I said, 'The mate was not drunk; that he might have had a couple of glasses in him, but not more.' " Morris, answering Mr Mays, said he had not made this statement when previously examined because it did not occur to him till after he had heard Peterson's statement regarding a conversation with Mays. Samuel Campbell Pratt, labourer, of Aramoho, • Wanganui, wL.< was a passenger by the *Kia Ora, expressed the opinion that De Wolfe was under the influence of liquor, and said that this opinion had generally prevailed among the passengers. William Dunning, fireman, said that De Wolfe was not drunk. There was nothing abnormal about his condition. He had a peculiar walk, however, swaying from time to time.