MAROONED ON CORAL ISLAND

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 44, 16 November 1925, Page 9

MAROONED ON CORAL ISLAND

MODERN ROBINSON CRUSOE NEEDS SUPPLIED BY THE AORANGI Vancouver, November 13. The Aorangi’s passengers on 1 the homeward trip can tell a real story of the relief of a modern Robinson Crusoe marooned on a tiny coral island in mid-Paicific by the failure of the company for which he was managing a copra plantation. At the request of the liquidators of the Samoa Exports Company the Aorangi called on November 1 at Hull Island, between Suva and Honolulu, to get information of the conditions and to deliver letters to Mr. A. Schaeffer, originally engaged as manager there by the Leverhulmes. He, with his wife and two children, together with a score of kanakas, had been there for four vears, and for the past eighteen months had been entirely without communication with the outer world. With a native crew Mr. Schaeffer left the island in an outrigger canoe, with a story’ of worry and hardship which Captain R. Crawford wirelesed the Governor of Fiji. For eighteen months Mr. Schaeffer has received no word from his company, and for four months his supply of ordinary food had been exhausted, a,nd the little party had been subsisting entirely on fish and coconuts. Their medical stores were reduced to a dozen quinine tablets, and three of the natives were sick. Captain Crawford landed emergency medical necessaries, and also supplied food, the stewards donating a welcome supply of whisky and tobacco. Mr. Schaeffer had not smoked a cigarette for two years, and also mourned the loss of his false teeth.

The Aorangi later advised that Suva was sending a relief ship to take off the little community and 50 tons ot accumulated copra. In gratitude Mr. Schaeffer wished the Aorangi to wait for him to deliver two mammoth sea turtles, but the ship was unable to further delay the voyage.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.