Sharks in sea ordeal

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33408, 14 December 1973, Page 3

Sharks in sea ordeal

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright)

SUVA, December 13. Survivors from the 212-ton inter-island vessel Uluilakeba yesterday described how 50ft waves and circling sharks terrified them during their long wait for rescue in the sea.

The vessel capsized in a cy- ■ I clone in the southern Lau [group of islands about 200 I miles south of Suva on Mon■iday.

< Some survivors were in the water almost two days before | searching aircraft and ships j found them. The China Navigation vessel Soochow brought 41 people back to Suva, but officials fear that 54 people went down with the shin or drowned. Five other people were lost from the 50ft Government cutter iMakogai which sank about The same time. i Thousands watched a grim I sight at Suva as the survivors ! walked or were carried i ashore on stretchers for waiting ambulances. Tears streamed down the I face of a 27-year-old house--wife. Mrs Tili Vakatalai, as ;she told how her two-year-old nephew was lost. She said that she was tak-i ing the boy to Suva fori Christmas to visit his grand-1 parents. She became very! sea sick. “The seas were very rough! and the winds the strongest: I have seen. We were on deck and soaking wet. “A member of the crew: took the child into a cabin, i I followed later but could not! find the child. “The ship started to list, and I was frightened. I ran up on deck again and jumped into the sea with the other passengers,” Mrs Vakatalai said. The ship’s boatswain, Mr Metui Lasarusa, aged 43, said the capsize was so sudden that he was sure many people went down with the ship.

“Those in cabins did not stand a chance,” he said. “I think everyone was scared. Most of the ship’s crew jumped when she did the final Slip.” Mr Lasarusa described how he was swimming alone, using a sack of coconuts as a float, when he saw a shark fin slicing through the water towards him. "I am a God-fearing man and I prayed.” he said. “The! shark seemed to veer away.: It circled once or twice, and) then disappeared. “I thanked God and thought of my wife and children who were awaiting my return in Suva.” SHARK ATTACK A schoolteacher, Mr Isireli Waqa, said a boy aged eight, in the water with him and other passengers, was taken by a shark. “The shark tore his leg off and he disappeared in a swirl of blood.” Mr Waqa said. “We could do nothing. We did not see him again.” i One of the last survivors I picked up, Mr Eremasi Saiu-| salu, the watchman, said inhospital that he and the cap-i tain were the last to jump, “Both I and the captain; were sucked under, but I; was saved by sacks of coco-: nuts forced out of the ship's hold. I did not see the captain again.” The master, Captain Jesoni Kuuyawa, is among those TicfnzJ oc miccinn