VALUABLE MAIL LOST.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14982, 1 June 1914, Page 7

VALUABLE MAIL LOST.

| Silver bars amounting to one million dollars, which wero en route to England, together with largo quantities of valuable mail matter, were lost. | STATEMENT BY THE STORSTAD'S CAPTAIN. VERSION OF THE LINER'S OFFICERS. WERE SIGNALS DISREGARDED? (Received June Ist, 12.35 a.m.) QUEBEC, May 30. Captain Andresen, of the Storstad, has arrived. He declares that tho collision was or tiroly due to the fog, which shut down everything on both vessels very quickly. The Storstad picked up three hundred persons, transferring them later aboard the Government vessels. This fact gave rise to the belief that there were additional persons rescued besides those at first reported. The Storstad'- bows were stove in and her anchor lost, having sunk with the Empress of Ireland. Captain Kendall is incapacitated through nervous shock and is speechless. It is understood that Captain Kendall signalled in the customary way, indicating that the Empress of Ireland was maintaining her course. The officers of the Empress of Ireland assert that the Storstad answered the signals but failed to change her course. The Empress of Ireland was moving slowly when the Storstad struck her full in the side. Thomas Smartt, of Toronto, says that; Captain Kendall, when the crash came, was on the bridge. He shouted, "Keep your heads there! Don't, get exciteoT" Then he ordered the stewards to assist the passengers, shouting "Women and children first! Break open any locked doors." There was so much screaming and moaning that, although tho captain spoke through a megaphone, his voice was drowned. When told by the ship's doctor that the ship was lost, Captain Kendall buried his face beneath the tarpauli.i whereon he was lying after the re_cue, and cried as if his heart was broken. Several passengers assert that lifeboats fell from the port davits and _r_.-J:et\ -crow; the sloping deck, killing p_,„enge.'3 ag-iusb the further rails.