TAHITI SINKS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 195, 19 August 1930, Page 9

TAHITI SINKS.

• PASSENGERS AND CREW SAFE. On Board Ventura, Expected to Reach Pago Pago To-Morrow.

SMALL PART OF SHIP'S MAILS LOST

PENYBYN REPORTS GALE FROM SOUTH-WEST The Tahiti sank at about five o'clock on Monday, very soon after the crew had been transferred to the American mail steamer Ventura. At nine o'clock in the morning it was seen to be hopeless to try to keep the vessel afloat, and the starboard boats-—appar-ently the only ones workable—were launched. Passengers went first, and then the crew, and time was even found to save some of the light luggage and light mail. In the difficult task of boating the mails across from one vessel to the other, six bags were lost and 50 were damaged by water. The latest news received by Commander Nelson Clover, of the Philomel, from H.M.s. Veronica, which is among the islands further North on her winter cruise, is that the Ventura expects to reach Pago Pago to-morrow. When she saw that nothing more was required of her, the Norwegian tramp steamer Penybryn left the scene and made for Suva to replenish her depleted bunkers. The message adds, "She was afraid to face a south-westerly gale in the Pacific." Had the gale been 48 hours earlier the story of the Tahiti might have been the story of an awful tragedy. Soon after the passengers and. crew of the Tahiti were safe on the Ventura the doomed steamer, which had been gradually sinking deeper and deeper took the final plunge and disappeared.