ENCOUNTER WITH U-BOAT.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16405, 27 December 1918, Page 7

ENCOUNTER WITH U-BOAT.

EXPERIENCE OF TALAWA

After a short but exciting fight with a German submarine, in tho course of which four torpedoes missed the vessel, and a fifth tore a great hole in her side, the Australian requisitioned steamer Talawa was beached among the bathing-boxes of a fashionable Italian seaside resort on tho Riviera, according to Mr T. Spain, who was purser on tho vessel ,at the time (says the Sydney "Sun"). Tho Talawa was formerly ,the German steamer Wotan, and was taken over by tho Commonwealth authorities on the outbreak of war. Leaving Barry, near Cardiff, Wales, in close company with the steamer Crown of Leon, and laden with 6000 tons of coal for the Italian Government, tho Talawa was attacked in tho Mediterranean, opposite a point on tho Italian coast, about 42 miles from Genoa. The fifth torpedo that was launched etruck the vessel obliquely just forward of' the engine-room. Water poured through tho rent plate?, and quickly filled the forward holds. Down by the head the Talawa was sent at full speed towards the shelving beach, which was thronged with bathos and holiday-makers. She grounded on an oven keel amid tremendous excitement, and with many of the surfers swimming round her. Tho 50 men on board wero taken ashore and treated with the most lavish hospitality by the people of Savona. On the nest day, while a large crowd .flocked to the beach to see tho disablod steamer, tho Crown of Leon, also carrying coal, was chased by a submarine, torpedoed, and in a crippled condition grounded on the same strand as that on which tho Talawa lay, but farther out. Evidently surmising that she. was in deep water, the submarine commander made an audacious sally past Italian destroyers, and sent another torpedo crashing into the hull of tho vessel. Tho crew of the Crown of Loon manned the stern guh, and at tho fourth shot shattered the periscope, and the submarine was destroyed in full view of, and to the accompaniment of cheers of, tho crowd ou the beach.

The U-boats wore very active on the Italian coast at this period, Mr Spain said, and two moro damaged steamors wore run on to the sands within the following week, ivhile a Cunard liner, acting as a transport, was sunk in the same vicinity with the loss of nearly 400 lives.

Mr Spain was also on. board the A.U.S.N, liner, Kyarra, when she was torpedoed and sunk in the Mediterranean, and on the Commonwealth requisitioned German stoainer, _ Conargo, when she went down ufter a torpedo attack off the Irish coast. The I'afawa was salved, and has complotod a voyaj? 1 © from Calcutta to Australia within the past few weeks.