Abandoned in the Pacific.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 20, 18 October 1907, Page 11

Abandoned in the Pacific.

■ FATE OF AN OLD WARSHIP. Tile old French warship . Meurthe, which for years did duty on tho i'acific station, .was abandoned live days ago in a sinking condition in tho Pacific. The story of the loss of the ex-warship, which had ploughed the ocean under tlio French tricolor for 22 years, was'brought to Sydney last week by the, Fronch steamer St. Louis. ' . The St. Louis had been chartered to tow the Meurthe to Sydney, but was overtaken by terrific weather on the journoy, lost her tow, and finally had to leave hor a derelict owing to a leak having broken' out. There were.thrco men on. tho Meurthe when she left Noumea on September 28, and one of these met his death in a tragic mariner. It' appears that when tho heavy we.ithor;set in, Captain Chaniel, of the St. Louis, signalled to tho men on the Mourthe that ho wanted to slacken the hawser. ' While this was being carried out, a sailor lof the Meurthe named Capron, was overcome by what Captain Burn, of the, warship,, describes as 1 an epileptic seizure, to which tho unfortunate man was a subject. Caporn apparently took fright ! and, fainting, fell foul''of'the cable, which struck him and caused his death. ; Owing to tho accident nearly 30 hours elapsed before' tho St. Louis was underway . again with tho vessel in tow. / Sho then ran into a; v terrific galo,' nnd knocked about at an alarming rate. Tho result of the buffeting was that 1 the .old warship opened out and had to be abandoned. It was a perilous trip from the Meurtho to the St. Louis in an opon boat, but this was safely negotiated by tho men on tho Meurthe,' and shortly aftbr daylight on October 2 tho warship was left rolling rails under —a derelict in mid-ocean. The Meurthe was last seen about 70 miles west of Elizabeth Reef, iu latitude 29.16 south, longitude 157.50 east. She was then fast settling down,' and Captain' Chaniel says she could not possibly float long. Captain Burn, of tho Meurthe, describes tho experience as most trying. Said ho: —"Wo had an awful time on the night of October 1. Wo spent all night at the pumps, working as hard as hard as we could to check tho inflow of water, and were glad when daylight camo and wore able to signal our condition." Captain Burn speaks in tho highest terms of. the seamanship displayed by Captain Chaniel. The Meurtho had been purchased by the Moreland Smelting Company, who intended to break her up upon arrival. . She was a vessel of over 1000 tons, being built at Rochefort, in France, in 1835. She spent most of hor time in the Pacific, occasionally visiting this port for docking.