ANSWERING SECOND DISTRESS CALL

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 119, 13 February 1935, Page 9

ANSWERING SECOND DISTRESS CALL

Australia Returning to Seth Parker RADIO STORY OF FORMER ARRIVAL HEARD By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. Sydney, February 12. A wireless message received from H.M.A.S. Australia at sea says: “After we left the Seth Parker on Sunday afternoon, when she said that everything was well, we picked up her broadcast to American stations. It was a regular radio thriller. The announcer was full of the big grey battleship looming from the mists and descriptions of iSouth Sea storms. “Then wlign we were about three hundred miles away from the Seth again on Monday afternoon she sent cut a distress signal. Going back means that we may arrive late at Panama. We are now rolling fairly heavily and expect worse before reaching the Seth Parker.”

SEEN AS PUBLICITY RUSE

Opinion of Many New York Papers

New York, February 11. The "New York Daily News,” which like many other New York newspapers regarded the Seth Parker incident as a publicity ruse, says that Captain Lord “pulled the biggest Press agent scoop in years by having a British battleship with the Duke of Gloucester aboard'turn 400 miles off her course at a cost of £500.” A San Francisco shipping circles're gard the incident as unparalleled in the annals of the sea. More than a suspicion that Philip Lord in the American schooner Seth Parker made use of the SOS distress call as part of a radio publicity “stunt” is entertained by local seafarers. Strong colour to this belief was given by one of them when he produced a copy of the November issue of an American monthly publication entitled “Real America,” which, under the heading of “Behind the Scenes,” made the following comment of Mr. Philip Lord’s activities a few months ago : “The Lord is with us. Philip Lord, once the Setli Parker of a Sunday night semi-religious programme, made his final broadcast from the cabin of his fourmasted schooner, Seth Parker, before 1 leaving these parts and hieing off into the Smith Seas to kid the hula Jiula girls. Many who visited his boat at Pier No. 3 in the city docks were surprised when they discovered that it cost two bits to get aboard. Not that anyone minded paying the small fee, but because the whole business was commercialised to the last ease of crackers in the hold. “The broadcast from the Seth Parker has been sponsored by F , a company that makes a better mousetrap or something that goes by electricity and burns up no more current than a bedroom lamp. . . . Everything below deck was well marked to show whence it came. XXX donated the radio. Somebody else donated this, that, and a few more things. . . . “On Tuesday night the last of a series of broadcasts was given from a point 65 miles along the Tamiami trail. There is a telephone circuit along the trail, and this was put in order for the broadcast. Out at Chestnut Billy’s camp, Phil Lord and his assistants sat round the camp fire and passed the mike of peace. The whole business could have been pulled off at Osceola Gardens instead, of course, and that might have been easier than taking the Seminoles 65 miles into the. Everrlades for the occasion. It was a swell programme. Lord told the story of the Seminole maid who had worn a white woman's garment and been banished into the fastnesses of the Everglades to die. All very sad and touching. What Mr. Lord didn't know was that the Seminole maid referred to was at that moment just outside the firelight glow, busy powdering her nose. . . .’ IF SOS PROVES HOAX Newspaper Says Example Should Be Made London, February 11. The “News-Chronicle” in a leader savs: “Judgment cannot be pronounced until the full story of the Seth Parker in told, but the facts should be thoroughly explored, responsibility fixed, ami an example made of the offender if the distress signal proves a hoax.”