["Mystery of the Waratah", The Mercury (Hobart, Tas.), Tuesday 26 May 1914, page 3]
MYSTERY OF THE WARATAH.
CLUE TO LOST VESSEL'S FATE.
(From Buenos Ayres "Herald.")
It is so long since the Blue Anchor liner, s.s. Waratah, 10,000 tons, disappeared from human ken that even those who were closely interested in that drama of the ocean have given up all hope of knowing the truth until the sea gives up its dead.
Now comes the intelligence from Capetown to Buenos Ayres by a recently-arrived ship of the discovery of a bottle containing a message of despair from one of the passengers on the ill-fated vessel. If the authenticity of the epistle can be established, it forever dispels all doubts about the Waratah's end. The bottle with its weird message from the deep has been had been cast up upon the beach of Bird Island, which lies between Durban and Capetown, and is charted almost directly in the course the Waratah would have steered after passing the Port Elizabeth light.
The message bears a signature similar to that of one of the passengers known to have been on the liner. It is brief and dramatic in its hopelessness. Securely corked and carefully sealed in a bottle, it bears the ship's name, and reads:--
Ship in great danger. Rolling badly. Will probably roll right over. Captain is going to heave her to.
Later. If anything happens, will whoever finds this communicate with my wife, 4, Redcliffe-street, South Kensington, London.
(Signed) John N. Hughes.
The writing on the paper is plainly legible, large, and denotes great mental excitement. An indelible pencil was used, and the lack of punctuation would suggest that it was written hurriedly. Evidence of the finding of the bottle and its contents is given by four reputable local residents, and has caused considerable excitement in the coast ports.
It is now just on four years and seven months since the Waratah left Durban for Capetown en route to England. She was returning after her maiden trip to Australia with a full passenger list. Two days out she was spoken by the Clan Mcintyre, with whom she exchanged greetings. Since then no tidings of her have ever been heard, and the general presumption is that she "turned turtle" on September 28 in a gale which raged on the African coast about that date.
At the court of inquiry held in London in 1910, considerable evidence was adduced showing that the steamer was naturally top-heavy, and this fault was intensified by a 300-ton deck load of coal which was taken on at her last port of call. The cause of her disappearance resulted in a great diversity of opinion in maritime circles, but the finding of the Court merely showed that the steamer was manned considerably in excess of Board of Trade requirements.
The only other evidence of the wreckage of the liner was discovered in a small cove on the New Zealand coast, when, in December, 1911, a lifebuoy hearing the name "Waratah" was found by some fishermen. The company's agents at Wellington denied that the buoy was similar to those carried by the line, but a search of the shipping registers of the world failed to disclose any other ship bearing a like name.
Thousands of pounds were expended by the Australian and English Governments at the time of the disappearance of the vessel in a vain endeavour to locate the whereabouts and the cause of the accident. It was hopeless, and to this day she merely figures in Lloyd's List as "Missing."
