SAVED 90 MEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 14, 17 January 1940, Page 10

SAVED 90 MEN.

AN ELECTRIC TORCH.

SHIP ON GOODWIN SANDS.

UFEBOAT'S HEROIC BATTtB

(Special—By Air Mall.)

LOXDON, December 14.

If one man on board the doomed Belgian ship Kabinda of 5182 tons had not "had a pocket electric torch, 90 men would have been drowned on the Goodwin Sands. The ship, carrying a general carcro from South America to Antwerp, went aproinid on the tr.jachercus banks after escaping both mine and German submarine. Men in the lifeboat that went out to her were knocked down by a wave. But for two days and two nights they stood by her. They saw fifty men from the shore o-o aboard her to help the crew of forty clump the cargo overboard. They saw that it was all in vain—that the ship failed to move when another high tide came. Then they heard the pistol-like reports of the ship's iron nuts and bolts giving way. Ship Broke In Two. Hour after hour of uncertainty followed, and then, with the roar of thunder, the ship broke in two. A lifelioatman continued the story: "All her lights went out and everything was dark. For a time all was confusion. The crew and the fifty extra men aboard all became mixed. "Luckily someone had a pocket torch, and hyits little heani the men managed to grope their way and became bunched together near the bridge. "By skilful manoeuvring the lifeboat was brought sufficiently near to take them off. Fortythree scrambled into her, and with the lifeboat's own crew she became so loaded that in the shallow water she bumped along the bottom. "We fired distress rockets and sent out a call for another lifeboat to come out." Another went out and took off the captain and thirty men. Then the first boat went out again and took off the rest. So all the ninety men aboard the ill-fated Kabinda were saved.