RED SEA PEARLING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 33, 9 February 1939, Page 9

RED SEA PEARLING.

GIRL DHOW OWNER.

A FIGHT FOR LIFE. ADVENTURE ON THE SEA-BED. (Special—By Air Mail.) LONDON*. January 18. Martha Wranhill, a 22-year-old girl. \ who is captain of a Ked Sen pearling!] dhow, told of some of her :idveiituresj, this week when she visited London. She! jtook up her strange profcs~i.ni when J her father died two and .i It (If years ago. leaving her stranded in Djibouti. "My father was a trader in Abyssinia.)' but his business failed completely a ftv>r j the Italian conquest and we moved to our headquarters in Djibouti,"' she said.! "He had done a small business in buying! pearls, and that gave me tiio idea oil running a pearling dhow when he died suddenly, leaving me practically penniless. With what little money I had 1 bought one of the native pearling boats and collected a diving crew, who wouldi work on a sharing basis with me. I '"My first trip to the pearling bed: nearly cost me my life. One of the! natives, whom I made the mate, had known my father before he died, and 1 he took us to a secret oyster bed. Suddenly I saw through the clear .water 1 that one of the men had been trapped ' by a piece of rock that had fallen and ' caught his foot. There was no one to ' help me, so I had to dive to the rescue myself.

Thinking that it would be better fori him to lose his foot than his life. I picked up a big oyster-knife before 1: went over. When I got near him the 1 man panicked. He grabbed hold of in", and held me down with him. The shock made me release my breath, and for a! moment I thought I would drown. Prac- i tically unconscious, I kicked out and' caught him in the stomach. His grip] relaxed, and I shot to the surface, just in time." *