62 Await Rescue From Island

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30636, 30 December 1964, Page 9

62 Await Rescue From Island

(N.Z.P.A.- Reuter—Copyright) GLASGOW (Scotland), December 29. Sixty men and two women were last night reported marooned on a remote, palmfringed South Seas island as their ship, the Scottish freighter, Southbank, lay pounded by surf 50 yards from shore.

They swam 50 yards to safety from the grounded vessel to Washington Island, 1100 miles south of Hawaii, but one man was drowned in the attempt. He was Second Officer William Mackintosh, aged 23, from Ross and Cromarty, Scotland, who was on his first

voyage since obtaining his first mate’s ticket. The women are Mrs C. M. Jacob, wife of the ship’s master, and Mrs Mary Harkiss, aged 49, wife of Chief Engineer James Harkiss, aged 57. Mrs Jacob is from Norfolk and Mrs Harkiss from Loch Lomond. Most of the crew are from Australia, India, and South Africa. The Southbank had just been loaded at Washington Island, a copra-producing speck of land only nine miles in circumference and with only one fair-weather anchorage, and was homeward bound after a five-month voyage when she went aground. A United States Coast Guard cutter is on its way from Honolulu and a spokesman for Andrew Weir, Ltd., of Glasgow, which operates the ship jointly with Lloyds, said all the crew would be repatriated as soon- as possible. The marine superintendent of the Bank Line, owners of the Southbank, said today it was not known whether the ship could be salvaged.