SKELETONS IN DESERT

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 293, 24 September 1935, Page 6

SKELETONS IN DESERT

BOAT FOUND ON BEACH.

FATE OF KOBENHAVN RECALLED

United Press Association—Copyright)

’LONDON, September 23,

The Johannesburg correspondent of the “Morning Post” says that whitened skeletons in a desert, and a wrecked ship’s boat, are believed to be all that remains of the Kobenhavn, which was lost on its way from South America to Australia, with 60 men, in 1928. Members of an expedition returning from South-West Africa say that 400 miles north of Swakopmund they found one skeleton, then six skeletons together. Seven miles away half a ship’s lifeboat lay smashed on the beach. The party had apparently taken refuge from biting winds and sent one man to search for water —which he' could nob'have found within 50 miles. There was nothing to identify the remains with the Kobenhavn, except a piece of naval cloth, and the fact that the boat was of a Scandinavian type, and 1 the skulls were apparently Nordic. The Danish Consul is investigating, in the hope of solving one of the greatest of modern sea mysteries.

With a crew of 15, and 45 cadets, the Kobenhavn left Buenos Ayres on December 14, 1928. On December 22 two vessels exchanged radio greetings with her, and that, so far as is known, was the last time she was evei seen or heard of. Only one clue was found. That same from the schoolmaster at Triston da Cunha, who declared that he had seen a five-masted barque, answering to the description of the Kobenhavn, in distress off the island. Suddenly she altered 1 her course and disappeared. Sailors declared, however, that the vessel was the “pban tom barque” which navigators had seen on previous occasions drifting derelict in that region. The attempts made in March of this year to discover what happened to the Kobenhavn were a result of the efforts of the parents of the cadets, who raised funds for a seal ch of the islands to the south and east of Australia. A book was published telling the story of the loss of the Kobenhavn and the profits of this went toward the funds for the search. On April 17, 1934, a Finnish vessel arrived in Sydney and reported that she had found wreckage bearing the name of the Kobenhavn near the Australian coast.