CHASE IN PACIFIC.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 146, 21 June 1940, Page 6

CHASE IN PACIFIC.

ITALIAN LINER. CAUGHT BUT SET AFIRE. U.S. SHIP'S CREW SAVED. (Special—By .fir Mail.) SYDNEY, June 19.

It was revealed yesterday that the Australian auxiliary cruiser which pur sued and sank the Italian liner Komolo last week, after the Italian crew had set the ship on fire, immediately raced from the Komolo to the rescue of an American freighter aground on a reef. The cruiser has landed the passengers and crew of the Komolo and the crew of the American freighter at an Australian port.

The shadowing of the Romolo lasted a week, and was begun by the auxiliary cruiser when the. Romolo left Brisbane, just before Italy declared war. The second night out the Romolo, blacked - out, turned south-east into the Pacific in an attempt to race to a neutral port. Realising what the. Italian was attempting, the armed merchant cruiser'* commander went ahead on a course which he believed would bring him into contact with the Romolo.

At dawn the next day the Romolo was sighted. For two days more pursuit went on, the liner speeding for sanctuary and the cruiser hanging on. Next morning a thick column of smoke was sighted. As the cruiser raced towards it, her officers realised it was the Romolo. She was burning fiercely amidships, as she heeled slightly in a flat tropical calm, when the cruiser came up to her. Standing off, out of range of the intense heat, were six lifeboats crammed wit h passengers and crew. Everybody was picked up. 0a Reef Two Days. | The Australian cruiser fired a salvo at the Romolo to ensure her -sinking and then dashed to answer the S.O.S. of the American freighter. An officer of the freighter said later: "We thanked God for the Australian Navy. When the merchant cruiser came alongside we had been on the reef for more than two days. We ran on to the reef in a blinding rain squall, and the old ship had been grinding her hull div and night while we waited for help to come. We were impressed by the way your Navy went about, things." Apparently the Italians endeavoured to save their ship right up to the last, until it was clear that the Australian cruiser was overhauling them, for Madam Aida Senac, a Tasmanian-born Frenchwoman, who was the only nonItalian aboard the Romolo, said she had no time to collect even her letter of credit before she was ordered into one of the lifeboats. 'T found out afterwards that fires had aiready been started in the engine room,' she said. "The captain had been ordered by the Fascist! to destroy his ship rather than surrender it. He seemed deeply grieved, and remained on the bridge until the last person had left S!f Bh . ip V, R waß rather a frightening thing to find myself at the bottom of an open boat -with nothing but the circle of the horizon around us, for I could not see the Australian ship then. Behind us the great liner belched black smoke from her engine room. When ve had been taken aboard the rescue ship it was a terrifying sight to see the liner slowly burning. The Australian warship shivered as her gun crews sent shells screaming at almost point-blank range into the hull of the deserted Italian"