TRAGEDY FEARED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 January 1940, Page 6

TRAGEDY FEARED

FOUR MEN BELIEVED DROWNED YACHT WRECKED NEAR TAURANGA. ONE MAN STRUGGLES ASHORE (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, January 14. Four of a party of five men are missing and are believed to have been drowned after the Tauranga B class keel yacht. Ngahiiia. was -wrecked on Matakana. Island during a raging storm on Saturday night.

The owner of the yacht, Frank G. Gresham, garage proprietor, Tauranga, struggled ashore. Though suffering from shock, bruises and a fractured rib. he made his way across country to Mr Ross Faulkner's homestead for help. Those missing are: Leslie M. Mellars, married, aged 38, recently of Auckland, now local inspector at Tauranga for the National Insurance Company; Phillip H. Nielson, married, aged 33, borough council employee, Tauranga; Roy Tonkin, single, aged 23, second son of C. Tonkin, builder and contractor, Tauranga; John Herbert Willcock, single, aged 19, only son of Mr S. G. Willcock, secretary of the Bay of Plenty Racing Club. The Ngahuia left Tauranga on Friday evening for a cruise to White Island. She set out again on Saturday in good sailing weather for the return to Tauranga, but ran into very heavy weather on the way across. Though Mr Gresham is still suffering too severely from shock to be able to recount much that happened, it was apparently decided to run for shelter at Motiti Island. By this time a furious gale had developed and she was unable to reach Motiti. Mr Gresham attempted to go on to Mount Maunganui in the fierce rain storm which accompanied the raging wind but the men could not pick up the beacon on the seaward side of the mount and the yacht was compelled to go to sea again. She went ashore on Matakana Island shortly before 3 a.m. at a point about two miles north of the Mount. Whether she struck in the surf or farther out is not known because only fragments of the hull have so far been found and the exact position of the wreck has not been discovered. From what has been obtained from Mr Gresham, however, it is thought that least 50 yards of boiling surf separated five men from safety. It was impossible to use the yacht’s dinghy and the men plunged into the sea clinging to mattresses given to them by Mr Gresham. The -mattresses were found on Matakana Island beach today by search parties but, though 16 miles of shore was combed from daylight to dark and other, men scoured the coast of the mainland, not other trace has been found.