SETH PARKER INCIDENT

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21465, 6 May 1935, Page 11

SETH PARKER INCIDENT

SUGGESTION OF HOAX UNFOUNDED REPORT BY CAPTAIN OF CRUISER (EXITED MISS ASSOCIATION—B7 ELECTIUO TELXQF.APS— COrTJUQHT.) (Received May 5, 10.20 p.m.) MELBOURNE, May 5. Official reports from Captain W. S. Fraser Macleod, of the cruiser H.M.A.S. Australia, to the Australian Navy Board, completely clear Mr Phillips H. Lord, owner of the schooner Seth Parker, from the suggestion that his distress signals to the cruiser were a hoax. Captain Macleod gave details of the hurricane conditions which led to the Seth Parker's distress signals, and reported that there were ample grounds for fears for the schooner's safety. On two occasions it was in the track of a very considerable disturbance. The Minister for Defence (Mr R. A. ParkhiJl) said the Commonwealth Government was not making any charge for the cruiser's assistance to the Seth Parker. [When H.M.A.S. Australia was taking the Duke of Gloucester home from his Dominions tour, she answered distress signals from the American schooner Seth Parker some hundreds of miles north of Samoa. When she arrived she found the schooner safe and the peas abating. Mr Lord, owner of the schooner, is a wellknown American broadcasting star, and the Seth Parker was equipped with a short-wave transmitter, from which a sensational account of the hurricane and of the cruiser's race to the rescue was told. Sensational newspapers assumed that the distress signal was a hoax, while others urged that the incident should be investigated. A day later the Australia, which had gone on, was called back. She then took off some of the Seth Parker's crew, and stood by for some days till a siiip arrived to tow the schooner to Pago Pago, where she and her gear were sold.']