LIVED OVER AGAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 90, 16 April 1940, Page 5

LIVED OVER AGAIN.

SAMOAN HURRICANE. REUNION IN CALIFORNIA. HARDY VETERANS CELEBRATE. — (From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, March 26. The Samoan hurricane of '89 blew for four days in a private dining room of the Hayward Hotel in Los Angeles and many a good sailor went to a watery grave. And there were three United States men-of-war, three German battleships on brink of war and six trading clippers wrecked in the tropic gale. Eight survivors of the memorable storm, white-haired landlubbers, watched the barometer fall as they devoured their shrimp cocktails at the- luncheon celebrating the 51st anniversary of the adventure. Lieutenant Harry J. Tressalt, 80-year-old president of the West Coast Survivors of the Samoan Hurricane, read a radiogram of greeting from "Sandstrom and the Boys," East Coast survivors, also celebrating at the Boston Yacht Club.

Duncan Baird, 76, British seaman aboard the Calliope, English vessel andl only boat to escape into open sea froml the land-locked harbour of Apia, was the latest addition to the club. "Ours was the only boat that didn't go under," he said, and then there was more about "the luck of Johnny Bull." Duncan Baird lives in Los Angeles at 3905, South Harvard Boulevard. Ole H. Undlijen, 73, of San Francisco, and I Harry Fraser. 75, of 260, Mar Vista, Pasadena, survived the wreckage of the U.S.S. Vandalia, which they described as having "seven decks and no 'bottom." "Fraser swam ashore with the paymaster's safe." insisted someone—and none denied it.

There were 46 men ioet from aboard the Vandalia, and t,o one had a drink of water for a week, Fraser declared.

Lee Dickinson, apprentice boy aboard the United States flagship Trenton, now 71, lives at 4226, South Figueroa Street in Los Angeles. Two of hie shipmates, Lieutenant and Charles Perkins, both 80, were "on deck" to help remember the storm detail* and the collision between the Trenton and the Vandalia at the height of the hurricane. Hero of Horricane. Perkins carries eight "hash mark*"— enlistment stripes—on his right sleeve, indicating 32 years of service. He retired as a chief 'boatswain's mate and resides at 206, South Vine Street, Anaheim, Southern California.

Tressalt was a machinist in charge of the electric plant on the Trenton— for this very modern battleship was the first to carry those new-fangled Edison lights. Ten days after the storm he was at the bottom of the bay in a diving suit, when his promotion arrived, turning him into a chief petty officer. Richard H. Taylor, 69, "baby of the family," turned out to be the real hero of the hurricane, for out of the storm to him came the Congressional Medal of Honour. He is Honorary Past National Commander of the Armv and Navy Legion of Valour—and a quartermaster.

Quartermaster Taylor, while the crew fed salt pork to the ship's engines, steered the U.S.S. Nipsac ashore, funnelless and belching 1 black smoke, and jbeached her without losing a single man. jOnly men lost from the Nipsac were the .seven .sick, who had been sent ashore in a row-boat. Taylor lives at 217G, Hollyridge Drive, in Los Angeles. Adelbert Beesley, 74, Mormon missionary to the South Seas, and now a resident of Salt Lake City, watched the disaster from land. He had gone ashore four hours before the storm broke, having come to Pago Pago from Tutuila to pick up six- months' accumulation of mail.

Only guest the present reunion boasted was Lieutenant Arthur S. Pearson. United States Navy, retired, who has been a shipmate and best pal of Dickinson since 1891. Lieutenant Pearson [knows all of the people and places that the others mentioned—and he is always |a guest at the Samoan parties.