HANS HEDTOFT DISASTER

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29108, 21 January 1960, Page 9

HANS HEDTOFT DISASTER

Lifebelts Found Months Later

(From a Reuter Correspondent) REYKJAVIK (Iceland).

Nearly a year after the Danish liner Hans Hedtoft disappeared off Greenland while on its maiden voyage, two of its lifebelts have been found on the coast of Iceland. Their discovery adds to this mystery of the sea. It was on January 30 that a small radio station at Julianehaab in Greenland picked up a reiterated SOS from the Hans Hedtoft, which had been sailing around Cape Farewell (Greenland’s southern tip) on the way to Copenhagen when it hit an iceberg during a stormy Arctic night.

The last message of the Hans Hedtoft was: “The sea is pouring into the ship. We are sinking." Then there was silence and nothing more was ever heard. After an intensive search by ships and aircraft lasting more than a fortnight not even a tiny piece of wreckage was found. The Hans Hedtoft disaster had a striking resemblance to that of the Titanic. Although so much smaller—2B7s tons—it was, like the Titanic, on its maiden voyage and people had put great trust in its special construction, which, it was declared, made it unsinkable, even under the severest Arctic conditions.

The Hans Hedtoft story was all the more mysterious because no trace was ever found of it and none of its crew or passengers, totalling 95, survived. One of the things that will presumably never be solved is how the ship, equipped with the most advanced radar, could not have evaded an iceberg. Discovery of Lifebelts

An 80-year-old fisherman, Magnus Haflidason, living in a small hut on the barren coast of southwestern Iceland was recently walking along the beach when he discovered a lifebelt which had been washed ashore during the night. It bore the name “Hans Hedtoft—Koebenhavn.” A week later another lifebelt with the same marks was driven ashore there.

The discovery of these two lifebelts adds to the mystery. The greatest riddle is how could the lifebelts come to Iceland’s coast after eight months when according to the experts, the ocean currents all run in the opposite direction?

The old fisherman maintains that the ocean follows no rules He says he often finds on his rocky beach bottle messages from trawlers on the Grand bank of Newfoundland.

The icy Arctic waters keep many secrets. It was here in the straits between Iceland and Greenland that the battle-cruiser Hood sank during the war. Only rarely does the sea return what it has taken. That happened three years ago. The Norwegian sealer Jupiter had been blocked in and broken by the ice. The crew abandoned the vessel sinking about 50 miles from the eastern Greenland coast. The ship was declared totally lost and the insurance company settled a claim.

Eleven months later the Jupiter was sighted by Icelandic aircraft, driven ashore in a Greenland Bay. In the summer months it was repaired and returned to Norway for further use.