RUM-RUNNING.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20419, 14 December 1931, Page 11

RUM-RUNNING.

I # I TALE OF THE SEA. ADVENTURE AND DEATH. (VKITED PHKSS i SSOCUTION—BT ILICTBIO TELIOBAPH—CO PYRIGHT.) (Received Depember 13th, 7 p.m.) OSLO, December 12. Brought ashore near Maaloey, famishing and exhausted on a boat bearing the bodies of four shipmates, an English first officer, Savage, and a German engineer, Erhault, gave news of the fate of their Polish Captain Visnagrotsky, and the English and German members of the crew of the rumrunning steamer Venus, owned in London, and flying the Panama flag, which, sank after an encounter last January with a Customs vessel. The police had been searching for the Venus since the coastguard cutter fired twenty shots at her after she left Lerwick, Shetland Islands, with 5000 gallons of liquor aboard. The vessel subsequently, and possibly as the result of the gunfire, ran on the rocks near Bergen. The crew got her oif leaking badly. They pumped desperately until the vessel again grounded, and floundered in fifteen fathoms. The crew soughi: safety in two boats and on pieces of floating wreckage. Captain Visnagrotsky broke his arm when leaving the Venus, and was drowned. The first boat capsized, drowning six men. The second boat overturned, but the men aboard drifted clinging to its sides and bottom Tinti! two died from exposure and the bitter . Savage flew distress signals, which J fishermen observed and rescued the survivors, two of whom succumbed after beintr brought ashore. Savage and Erhault are expected to recover. ,A motor-boat has 1 been dispatched to seek possible , additional survivors. ' A The police caught Visnagrotsky rumrunning to northern Norway in 1930 with the schooner Emmanuel which the authorities confiscated. Tliey also imposed a fine on the captain, whom they expelled from Norway for smuggling thither 6000 gallons of liquor. FORMERLY A GERMAN TRAWLER. (Received December 14th, 12.45 a.m.) LONDON, December 13. - The Venus was formerly the German trawler Wobke. Her captain, while at Lerwick engaging a local crew, married a Lerwick girl, whose brother is among tho missing. ■ -