GRAVE FEARS FOR VANISHED VESSEL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 307, 28 December 1935, Page 9

GRAVE FEARS FOR VANISHED VESSEL.

TOW-ROPE PARTED.

Believed Lost With All Hands.

STORMS OFF VICTORIA,

United Press Association.—Copyright. (Ileceived 12 noon.) MELBOURNE, this day. Grave fears are entertained for the safety of the steamer Paringa, which left Melbourne on Monday for Japan with the tanker Vincas in tow. The Vincas appeared off Western Port yesterday in a helpless condition, and drifted towards the coast with four men aboard. She managed to drop anchor about a mile from shore.

Fierce storms have been raging on the Victorian coast since Tuesday. The taw-rope parted on Wednesday night and the Paringa disappeared.

No ship is reported as having seen the Paringa, nor has any lighthouse reported that she is sheltering.

This is the second ocean, tragedy— should the Paringa have foundered —which has occurred during the early stages of ■tows to Japan this year. The other occasion was wlien the Oonah, towing the former hospital ship Maheno, struck a cyclone off the Queensland coast in July. The tow-line parted, and the Maheno was feared to have foundered with her Japanese crew. However, she was sighted by an aeroplane stranded on an almost inaccessible beach on one of the small coastal islands. The Oonah is still waiting to salvage the ship, although Australian authorities have declared this to

The Paringa. is a steamer of 1359 tone. She is listed as owned by the Adelaide Steamship Company, Ltd., and was built in 1908 by Scott and Company, of Kinghorn.