TIMARU SENSATION

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 1736, 22 January 1913, Page 5

TIMARU SENSATION

WO MEN CARRIED OUT TO SEA. • (By Telegraph—Press Association.) TIMARU, Last Night. By an unfortunate error of judgment on tho part of an.old habitue of i tho river, it is feared that two lives liavo been loyt at the Rangitata mouth to-day. Charles Nicolas, elderly man, an old resident of Teanukai and a well known angler, and A. K. Darby, understood to be a Geruldine resident, this morning undertook to cross part of the Rangitata Stiver, near one of its mouths, in a flat bottomed boat. Nicolas had ferried one man over, and was fetching over Darby when the boat was overpowered by the current and' carried out to sea. Off the shore a breeze was blowing, and the boat carried a long way out to pea. Word was telephoned to Timarii, and Harbourmaster Tart went out in the Board's motor launch to the rescue. Starting at 1 p.m. he reached the river at 3.30, and zigzagged' about for •some time southward, but saw nothing cf tli9 boat. In the afternoon tho wind changed, and he concluded that with such a breeze the boat must have drifted ashore, if not swamped uni lost. There was no sign cf them ashore. People at Rangitata thought tho launch did not go as far out as' where the boat was last seen, as there was a considerable breeze, and a strong jobble ■ all the morning.