SHIPWRECKED MEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 97, 26 April 1930, Page 2 (Supplement)

SHIPWRECKED MEN.

LONG MARCH FOR HELP.

This is the tale that seamen tell of tli© little cargo- steamer Limpopo- whieli went ashore at Sylvia Hills on the southwest coast of Africa. She went ashore or. the night of New Year's Kay, and as the seas battered her she swung broadside on to the heavy swell and began to break up. llt was a dismal ending to her maiden voyage, for the Limpopo, just built at Grangemouth, had come 4000 miles without mishap. But there she lay, broken and helpless, in those early days of the New Year. Those who know the hearts of seafaring men can picture the agouy of mind of the captain. He refused to leave the ship. It was, to his seaman's mind, his pride, his hope, his command, his all; The others of the crew seemed for a time condemned to stay there with him, for the first boat launched capsized. Fortunately, no one was drowned, and the two men who had been thrown into the water struck out for the shore.

Once there, they managed to get a lifeline to the ship, and the 15 men of the crew crossed to the safety of the shore. But on shore their plight was desperate.. It was a bleak, inhospitable place, with no sign of habitation, and offering no prospect of food. The shipwrecked mariners had little. Some biscuits and water were all they had been able to bring' ashore. Starvation stared them in the face Eighty miles of desert lie between Sylvia Hills and tlie nearest township of Luderitz, but to Luderitz they must go if they would live. It would have been madness for the whole company of 15 to try. There wa* no food or drink to support such a party on such a trek. Yet three Capetown men volunteered to go, and try to bring succour to the others. They knew what lay before them, a waterless desert and only a handful of biscuits and half a gallon of water on which to compass 80 miles. They set out on a Thursday, and by Sunday ■ all their food was exhausted and all the water gone. Their tongues were swollen, their nostrils burning with blown sand, but they struggled on. They were fighting, not for their own lives only but for those of the twelve men left behind without food or water. All the slender store saved from the ship had been entrusted to the three messengers. It was not till Sunday night that the lights of Luderitz came in sight, a-«d by that time the wayfarers were so exhausted that they could do no more than crawl along. They took all night to reach the town along the coastwise road,,, and when they dropped exhausted in Luderitz. on Monday morning, these bassard men coula ..ot speak. Their tongues were too swollen. They could barely stand up. They were too exhausted to write. It was twelve hours before one of them" was sufficiently recovered to tell his tale. But the next morning the harbour tug set out for Sylvia Hills. It reached the twelve survivors of the Limpopo just in time. They were half dead from hunger and exposure, but they could just raise a chcer.