MYSTERY OF THE ATLANTIC

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 129, 24 February 1939, Page 9

MYSTERY OF THE ATLANTIC

Ship “Torpedoed By Submarine” UNIDENTIFIED RADIO CALL By Telegraph.—Pres* Assn. Copyright. (Received February 23, 1 1.30 p.m.) LONDON. February 23. The Portishead radio station yesterday picked up an SOS message from a ship which gave the callsign PECC and its position 32 degrees 10 minutes north and 37 degrees 45 minutes west, stating that it had been torpedoed by a submarine and was sinking. The callsign, which is not recorded in the marine registers, resembles signs allocated to Dutch ships, but Lloyd’s state that it is not likely to be a Dutch vessel, and that they are investigating the possibility of its being Swedish. There is also a possibility that the SOS was from the British tanker Pecten, which left Trinidad on February 8, and is due at Southampton on February 27. A New York message states the SOS was picked up by an American ship and relayed to a nearby radio station. It cannot be determined from the records whether the vessel is the Dutch ship Flandria or the Belgian Flandres. The Canadian Pacific liner Empress of Australia, which was closest to the position given by the wireless message, reached the spot on Wednesday night, but reported no sign of a wreckage. The position given is near the middle of the Atlantic due west of Madeira.