A SOUTHERN TRAGEDY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10227, 2 May 1911, Page 5

A SOUTHERN TRAGEDY.

YOUNG MINER'S HEROISM. ; The details of the miai i ; i fatality reported recently fro n Round Hiii, Southland, in which two young' i :iners were caught and smothered by drifting sludge, show that the younger one of the two sacrificed his life in a heroic effort to save his, comrade. Hie two, Joseph Bates and Frank Smith, were working, (on the night shift) round the mouth of a suction pump on the Round Hill G. G. Company's claim, their duty being to keep the way clear for the oozing oementy sludge water to be drawn up the suction pump. The evidences after the disaster show, thafe Bates must have slipped,' atodV that as a result one'" of his legs -was drawn up the suction pip© to the shin and there broken. Smith appears to have held Bates 'np, to prevent the sludge whieli was rising in the hole in they worked from smothering him, and; at the same time to have worked away with a crowbar in an endeavour to free Bate's' leg from the pipe. Apparently when it was too late he recognised his own danger. The cementy sludge had him by the legs, and no effort could free them. There, holding up his comrade's head, and waiting through the night this young fellow died the horrible waiting death of being smothered by the rising sludge, which gradually rose till it went 18 inches above bis head. The two. men were thus found, with arms interr locked, when the morning shift, startled by the sight of *wo floating coats in the flooded paddock, put in a new * pump and pumped away the sludge which had overwhelmed their comrades. Smith was only 20 years of age.