TRAGEDY FEARED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 January 1939, Page 8

TRAGEDY FEARED

IN AUCKLAND HARBOUR. SWIMMING MAN DISAPPEARS. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, January 29. Cries for help were heard by a party of young men and women on board the hulk Wanganui, just off Shoal Bay on Saturday night, and, when they looked over the side they saw one of their number trying to row a water-fiilled dinghy about 40 yards away. No other dinghy was available and the last seen of the man in the boat was when he abandoned it and began to swim toward Northcote.

He is Mr Robert Franklin Jones, single, aged 22, of Grey Lynn. The Devonport police have searched the neighbourhood of Northcote wharf, but neither the- dinghy nor Mr Jones has been found.

There were 12 persons in the party, which left the launch steps at eight o’clock that evening. It is said that about an hour later Mr Jones suggested to a man friend that they should take the dinghy from the hulk and row it on the harbour, but the friend refused.

Unknown to either ,the dinghy was unseaworthy and without a plug.

Mr Jones must have decided shortly afterward to go alone, for about 15 minutes later he was missed. It was during the search for him that his cries for help were heard. Though he was clad in light summer clothing and known to be a good swimmer the majority in the party were anxious for his safety. The sea was calm at the time.

One of the men on the hulk, with a knowledge of the morse code, flashed an S.O.S. signal in the direction of the mainland. At about 9.45 o’clock it was intercepted by a man on watch at the harbourmaster’s office at Queen’s Wharf. The message was sent through the Mount Victor signal station to the Harbour Board’s pilot launch Ferro, on its way with a pilot to meet the Federal Line steamer, Kent, which was to arrive that night from Liverpool. The Ferro was diverted to give aid to those on board, the hulk, but the search for Mr Jones proved fruitless.