SINKING OF THE "MARQUETTE."

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XLIV, Issue 6591, 20 January 1916, Page 5

SINKING OF THE "MARQUETTE."

INTERESTING NARRATIVE.

The followiiig is an extract from a letter received by an Auckland resident from "Rolley" Benjamin, well-known on the East Coast as a commercial traveler, who is at the front The letter is dated Salonika, October 29th:—

'Thank the good Lord I am her*\ all safe and sound, after having been through'the most trying time of my life. Juat a week to-morrow. Saturday, October 23rd, when about four hours' steam from Salonika, our destination, our good ship "Marquette" was torpedoed by an enemy submarine arc! sank in fifteen minutes. We were only able to grab a life-belt each and leave the ship as fast as possible. About 100 live* were lost, out of wWph ten were Siateis. and twentyfive belonged to our unit; the remainder belonging to an English division. My four mates have done, namely, Femmett, .Rhodes, Kirk and Robinson; all except Rhodes died from exposure, R q the water was bitterly cold and most of us were in it for S hours. A young fellow named Clark and I hung on to a piece of timber from the hatchway cover, and were the last to be picked up by the French torpedo boat. We we«e in a very exhausted erudition, being nearly'frozen, but filter getting into some dry clotnes and drinking a glass of hot wine, 1 sonn recovered, and am now just as fit snd well as ever. Ponr Vie. Rhodes (from Woollan:s) was down in our mess-room before the explosion took place, and had b'tn legs hlown off, so bad no chance of fighting for his life. Had we been hit halt an hour earlier hardly one of us would have been paved, as we shcul'l have nil been down at breakfast, and as the stairway was blown away, we should have hnd n very poor chance of getting on deck. I last everything I possessed and landed here with only a pair of short pants, shirt, drawers nnd singlet, snd three shillings in rupb, everything el-e having gone down with the ship. Everyone, including our cflfi-ers. was in the same sad pliant. I jumped overboard about five minutes before the boat sank and pwara an hard as I could to get away from the suction; T was about Mty yards away when she took the nna nlnnpe. Tt wan a magnificent and dreadful sight, and I don't want to think of it any more than possible. She wept down bow first, and at the finish her stern was straight out ot the wa*Pr just like the pictures we have seen of sinking ships, with men struggling all round her. On arrival at Salonika we were taken m board two hospital ships, and received all the. attention '^possible.- 1 | *vafl on the C«nad-.. a French-Canadian i ship, and P «clo«e one oE her hat-bands na a souvenir. My watch wristlet went for one hour after being in the water but. is now full of rust My old carved pipe and all my little knick-knacks are now with Davy Jones. The'acciden took place at nine in the morning, ana it was a mighty good job it wssn t at nieH. Our men-of-war went out tne next day and caught the submarine, which proved to be an Austrian one. All we couid see of her after being nit was her periscope, about two feet out j .of the wa*er; she did her work and J did it well. - As far as our hospital is concerned it means a terrible loss, and it will be months before we get an equipment together like the one we have lost. In the meantime nur unit is being loaned to various English Tunits as wanted. I bad written you a lovely long letter on boaid, telling all about my stay in Alexandria, but as it was lost I will have to start all over agiin, so.here goes: In mv last tetter I mentioned tfc^t we had packed up our hospital and were awaiting orders to move on : word came through on the Thursday for two officers and forty men to proceed to Alexandria that nieht. with all our enods. Captains Stout and Isaacs were in char£»e,and I was amongst the forty selected. We left Port Said that night at 8 o'clock, and by travelling all night, arrived at Alexandria at 5 en Friday momma, after a very cold and unpleasant trip. We found ,our steamer was not in. and would not be in for two days, so we were given the two days leave and had a good look iround the place. Alexandria is a very big town, and the English Quarters are fine, containing very up-to-date shops, hotels, etc. We started loading our ship on Sunday morning and worked riant on till , ! Tuesday morning. Tt was very warm and we were working on the coal wharf and looked more like niggers than white men by the time we had finished. Tuesday morning I managed to get leave for two hours and went to

— j j ~- ■.--«• -o -'--.- «i;-i... j at 4.30 p.n:., all looking forward to oar 1.-m!im? in Grnecf, never dreaming that we should arrive uero as snipwrecked soldiers. Our quarters were down in the ptonvtwo holds below, the mules being on the deck above us. We ail slept in hammocks a< d found them very comfortable. Ihe second day out we changed our quarters ana went right up in the bow, where there were not so many mules and we were right away from ths Tommies, who ara very jealous of all Australian and N.Z. troops, on account of the diirerence in pay; they only get la per day, while we get ss, and nave a much better time altogether.

This place—Salonika--is a quaint old Greek town, very dirty and smelly, and at the present id iilied with troops <ii alor.ost every nationality. One sees some very picturesque eights, and 1 only wish I had my camera with me. As soon as I can save up trough 1 will buy another or,e.*'