MAN DROWNED IN SOUTHLAND
(BY TELEGRAPH. — PRESS ASSOCIATION.)
INVERCARGILL, This Day. As the result of continuous rain on Saturday and Sunday, heavy rains are reported from various parts of Southland. Washouts occurred on all branch railway lines, and traffic was practically suspended. The rain has now ceased. It will probably take a week to restore the damage.
Samuel Templeton, whilst driving a trap and two houses from Mokatua to Waimahaka, was drowned. The road was covered to a depth of five feet. Several people witnessed the accident, but were unable to help owing to the large area under water. Deceased leaves a widow and six children. -Evening Post, 28/5/1917.
Tragedy of the Floods
SAMUEL TEMPLETON’S DEATH.
When Samuel Templeton, of Waimahaka, driving from home from Mokotua on Sunday in a two-horse buggy, reached Waimahaka flat about about 5.50 p.m., his companion, Walter Crighton, farmer, Fortrose, realised the danger, and got off, and walked along the railway line; but Templeton, who was one of the best drivers in Southland, made light of the danger and drove on. Soon after the buggy was capsized in the torrent, and its occupant drowned. The sad story of his fate is thus told by the Wyndham Farmer: —
“After Crighton had crossed the railway line he ran to the house nearby of Mr Robert O’Grady, surfaceman, and asked him to keep watch while further assistance was sought. The news spread like wildfire, and all Waimahaka had gathered at the spot.
“Templeton must have misjudged the road route, it is generally surmised, by about two chains on the upstream side, because while he was calling out in his plight he said he was holding on to a telegraph pole, and his body was found alongside such a pole the next morning some 24 chains upstream from where the road culvert crosses the stream, close by the railway line. He would there get into the eddy formed by the rushing water through the viaduct in the railway embankment, because ropes and wire and a trough thrown at random to his assistance floated back to the bank of the line. As one of the horses was rescued the next morning hanging to the fence close by the undamaged buggy two chains upstream from the road it would seem that Templeton had floundered about only half a chain away from where the capsize occurred.
“Owing to the inky blackness of the night, and that the waters (estimated as between 10 feet on the flat), rushing with great velocity in the current of the stream, the onlookers were unable to locate Templeton’s position, although Mr George Dowler made several heroic attempts to do so on horse back. Templeton himself exhorted Dowler to get out of the current of the stream, or he, too, would be surely drowned. In response to a message to Fortrose for a boat, it arrived too late to be of service. The saddest part of all was when the doomed man felt his strength giving way through becoming numbed by lengthy exposure in the icy-cold water, and bade farewell to his aged father and mother (both of whom were among the helpless group of spectators on the railway line), and sent through them a final message to his wife and little ones.
Templeton, who was a native of Wyndham, leaves a widow and six little children, and it is feared they are not too well provided for. His wife is a sister of Mr Ben Patterson, carpenter, Wyndham. As a young man he fought in the Boer War.”
MY COMRADE “SAM.”
We never know when dawn appears Our fate throughout the day.
It may he sadness and all tears, Or brightness all the way.
But he who meets it with a heart unfearing, brave, and true,
Thus nobly acts a hero’s part, Unmindful of his due.
Sam Templeton — a soldier once — Set out for home one day.
Nor waited though the flood was high — His duty lay that way.
And when he neared the bridge, Submerged ’neath waters deep,
He said: “No waters shall prevent My going home to sleep.”
He knew his horses — staunch and true; Himself — he could not quail;
So, with one headlong plunge he drove, And headed for the rail.
The current turned his horses round, He drove right o’er the bank,
And deep beneath the angry flood both man and horses sank.
Sam “stuck it” to the very last, And freed the nearest horse,
The other by this time being drowned. With coat weighed down
He could not swim a single stroke, Yet he was not dismayed,
But grasped a near electric pole, And clung there — waiting, aid.
The numbing cold, the piercing wind, His vital force o’ercame,
He clung until all feeling went, E’en vision seemed to wane.
His mother called to cheer him up. And told him help was near.
“Too late,” he cried, his grasp relaxed, “Good-bye, O mother dear!”
With anguished heart the mother stood, And saw her son in peril,
Then heard him swept down by the flood, Her tears poured forth like rain.
A death-bed scene with comforts round, Fills any heart with pain,
But who can sense her anguish deep, Or that poor mother’s strain?
— By John S. Patterson, South In’gill. -Southern Cross, 9/6/1917.
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