SAVED JUST IN TIME

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 228, 23 June 1936, Page 9

SAVED JUST IN TIME

Australian Freighter’s Drift

Toward Rocks

LINER TAKES HER IN TOW By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Adelaide, June 22. With her engine, thrust block carried away and her propeller shaft bent, the inter-State freighter Mungana (3351 tons), with a crew of 47, became disabled off Margaret Brock Reef, near Cape Jaffa, about 200 miles from Port Adelaide.

A message received at Adelaide at 12.24 a.m. to-day from the captain of the Mungana read: “Three miles off Margaret Brock Reef. Drifting north-nprth-east. Position grave.” The liner Nestor answered the call for help, and at an early hour this morning was endeavouring to get a line aboard the Mungana, but owing to heavy seas was not successful. Advice, received at 2.5 a.m., stated that the Mungana was drifting north-north-east at two miles per hour. Both anchors and cables had gone, and the vessel was about two miles off the rocks. Later, however, the Nestor succeeded in passing a tow-line to the Mungnna. . JS X. . The last radio message received before the tow-line was picked up indicated that all the anchors were gone and the position bad. The vessel would have been on the rocks within an hour if she had not been helped. The Nestor is towing the Mungana to Adelaide.