STRANGE ADVENTURES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 112, 15 May 1933, Page 7

STRANGE ADVENTURES.

YOUNG MEN'S MISHAPS. LONDON, May 8. An 18-year-old Robinson Crusoe and a modern Trader Horn were landed by the liner Dolius on docking after a six months' trip at Liverpool. The "Crusoe" adventure concerned James Miller, an 18-year-old apprentice in the Dolius, who fell overboard in the dark off Singapore last January. He swam through a shark-infested sea to an island, found it uninhabited, and started to swim to another island, when he was picked up by Chinese boatmen and restored to his ship.

The adventures of Frank Jones, a bronzed young man of 20, of Surrey, took him to the same part of the world. Seven years ago he started trading among the islands north of Australia. With two other young men, Jack Gatty, brother of Harold Gatty, the American airman, who flew round the world, and David Sibree, of Hull, he set off, from Thursday Island, on a trading trip to N T ew Guinea. Their cutter struck a reef in a gale off Dutch New Guinea, and when they eventually reached land they were confronted with miles of mangrove swamps. "We went for two days waist deep in mud," Jones said. "At last we struck a village of headhunters. One of our party fired over their heads, and they ran away. Village after village seemed to know of our presence, and when we arrived there they took up the same threatening attitude. We plodded on for 10 days, and reached the small Dutch settlement of Marauki." Jones and his friends at last reached Celebes Island, where Jones boarded the Dolius as a distressed British seaman.