Seamen Rescued After 12-Day Ordeal On Raft

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28154, 18 December 1956, Page 23

Seamen Rescued After 12-Day Ordeal On Raft

(N.Z. Press Association—Copy right)

(gee. 8 p.m.) SINGAPORE, Dec. 16. Ten Burmese seamen who had drifted for 12 days at sea on a raft while seven of their starved and delirious companions jumped overboard one by one, arrived in Singapore today aboard the Japanese ship £an Maru. Thev were rushed to the British military hospital for treatment. Their ship, the gunboat, MGB 103, jgnk in a storm on November 29, while on a trip from Rangoon to Mergui, in southern Burma. The crew of 27 put out to sea in two in one and nine in another. Eight died on the bigger raft. The raft with nine has not been heard of since. They were picked up on December 11 when all they had left were two tins of water. Lieutenant Ba Thaw, aged 29, captain of the gunboat, told newspapermen in hospital today that one man jumped into the sea on December 8. two went mad with drinking salt water and fell overboard and another jumped on December 9, two jumped into the sea on December 10, and one more just before they were rescued on December 11. Another man died on the Esan Maru on December 13. He said: “I could not stop them jumping overboard. They preferred death to starving. They thought they were going to die, which I never believed. “One of those whose mind had gone grabbed the raft and tried to capsize it. I had to push him away.” Lieutenant Thaw said that on December 7 his second officer. Lieutenant Sau 00, who was suffering from a gastric ulcer, asked his permission to jump overboard. “I gave him permission to commit suicide. He could not bear it any more.” Of himself, the captain said: “I

never gave up hope. Those who give up hope die.” Lieutenant Ba Thaw said that the crew cast off from the sinking ship ea E I Z ln the morning in two inflated rubber rafts, about eight feet across, ihe stem piece of the ship had broken in the storm and she was shipping water fast. J* l don’t think the nine men on the er i_ ra ft are alivo by now because they had no officer on board to keep discipline,” he said.

The only rations they had in the raft were 36 tins of fresh water and four dozen tins of English sweets. He rationed them to sweets and one ounce of water twice a day. ‘‘We were so crowded on the raft we could hardly breathe at night. Nine men sat on the edge of the raft until midnight keeping watch while the other nine slept sitting up. Then they changed positions,” he said. A ship passed near them on December 2 but did not see their flare. The captain said he wasted all his rockets on planes and ships and when the Esan Maru went by he could only wave the Burmese flag. “I never thought they would see us,” he said. He said that on the second day they drifted in sight of a rocky uninhabited island and were only two miles away on the next day when the current and wind changed. They were carried slowly out to sea again until on the sixth day they could not see the island. > , One of the crew tried to steal part of the water rations. As a disciplinary measure he made him stay in the water for two hours. Lieutenant Ba Thaw said he tried to stop the men drinking salt water. “But they did it when I wasn’t looking. I couldn’t keep a constant watch.” Asked what he thought about on the raft, the lieutenant said: “I thought about all the jokes and cartoons about

shipwrecks that I had ever seen in newspapers.” Hospital authorities said today nine of the men had recovered while on the Esan Maru from the worst affects of their ordeal. One was still suffering from exposure and lack of food. A Royal Navy spokesman in Singapore said to-night a message had been received from the British military attache in Rangoon sayinp seven more survivors from the gunboat had been nicked up. The spokesman said the message gave no further details.