NIAGARA TO RESCUE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 31, 7 February 1928, Page 10

NIAGARA TO RESCUE.

CREW OF BURNING SCHOONER . STORY OF THE DORIS C. CRAKE j i THREE HOURS IN THE BOATS. j i (From Our Special Correspondent.) J SAX FRANCISCO, January 0. 1 Snatched from the shadow of death, j after a futile battle against flames ' which destroyed the motor schooner '• Doris Crane, far out in the South Seas, officers of the British vessel arrived in San Francisco to tell of their almost miraculous rescue through the chance 1 passing of a New Zealand liner. The blazing craft inl the dark of the night attracted the attention of the mail steamer Niagara, 35 miles awav, and the I white officers and nine native members, of the crew were saved. The Doris; Crane sank, the funeral pyre of a South Sea Islander, who lost his life battling ithe flames. . 1 "We were at breakfast on December ' Ip. nine days out of Fanning Island, jwlion we heard an explosion," said' |Captain Hiram C. Davison. "A can of 1 'gasoline had capsized in the engine room, ; land the whole place became a mass of flames. Two native oilers, Inaibo and '• Rerei, were inside, and I don't sec how 1 they ever got out. Inaibo, a barefoot . Savage Islander, was a hero. His own leg badly burned, he struggled out on deck, dragging poor Rerei, who died shortly afterward. "We had no wireless, and were 340 miles from land. We could not reach the pumps. The copra cargo and fuel tanks must have caught fire. We could not stop the engines, and the ship churned ahead for three hours. We sealed the engine room, bored holes in the decks, and all hands got busy with, I buckets of water. We didn't stop for 19' jliours, and there was three feet of water' 'in the holds when we left. "Two lifeboats Merc provisioned, and 1 we went over at 2.30 the next morning. It was dark and choppy. The whole ship' was beginning to burn, and we hoped someone might see it, though those are lonely seas. In the darkness the steamer; Niagara saw the flames 85 miles away. We fired distress rockets, and the Niagara changed her course to the spot.. We had been in the lifeboats three and a-half hours when the Niagara's lifeboats ' rescued us. The Niagara looked mighty > good to us as her lifeboats came up. [ Captain T. U. Hill, master of the Niagara, treated us with every consideration, and I am now wearing a hat r he loaned me." I t ® av^son suffered injury to hia left foot as he was boarding the Niagara, - and he came into San Francisco on " crutches. The officers and crew of the los^U^^^g^nd

Captain Davison was able to savei 'nothing except the ship's mail and papers! and one or two nautical instruments. ! The Doris Crane was considered the most elaborately equipped commercial j sailing ship ever built. She was designed| and built by the late Frank Stone at his: Oakland (California) yards in 1920 fori Fanning Island, Limited, a British trad ] ing concern, of which Weightman and! Crane, an oldtime San Francisco trading' firm, were agents. Khe was a three-1 masted topsail schooner with Diesel! auxiliary power. There were a large! refrigerating plant and electric lighfs.i and amidships she was housed across to| [make room for a number of staterooms] j for inter-island passenger service. These|, were equipped with running water like! | any passenger liner. " j