MANY MISSING

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 102, 24 January 1940, Page 10

MANY MISSING

Rescues From Italian Liner

ORDEAL OF FIRE AND STORM Explosion In Engine-room By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. (Received January 23, 8.-10 p.m.), LONDON, January 22. ■ It is now officially stated in Rome that 82 persons are missing from the 11,600-ton Italian liner Orazio, which is on fire in the western Mediterranean. Hope for them has been almost given up in view of the stormy seas. Survivors who have been landed state that an explosion occurred in the engine-room, setting fire to the ship, while she was fighting her way through a storm. Many of the passengers and crew threw themselves into the sea. Many of those rescued were badly burned. All were suffering from exposure. Five engineers are believed to have been killed by the explosion. Three crowded lifeboats were swept away and lost in the darkness. An officer of the vessel said that the fire burned all night and spread so rapidly in the gale that some of the lifeboats were burnt. Twelve Italian seaplanes, five liners, two French warships and one minesweeper co-operated in the rescue of passengers and members of the crew from tlie Orazio.

She is drifting and on fire from •stem to stern in the storm-swept Mediterranean. A seaplane flying over the ship reported that she is a gigantic torch, the oil from her bunkers feeding the flames. The mainmast has fallen overboard and a lofty pillar of flames is shooting up from the poop. The owners’ latest statement says that the ship carried. 417 passengers and 218 of a crew.

The Orazio was for a time towed by ■a rescue vessel, but she is now reported to have been abandoned. The Paris .correspondent of the “Daily Mail” says that French warships and Italian and French seaplanes were still searching at midnight for the missing lifeboats, which contain many women and children. French circles in London revealed that a French auxiliary cruiser stopped the Orazio before the tire and took off eight Germans. Utter she received tile SOS and played a prominent part in the rescue.