NAURU BOMBARDED

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 80, 28 December 1940, Page 9

NAURU BOMBARDED

Heavy Attack Yesterday By Sea Raider PHOSPHATE INDUSTRY LONDON, December 27. The Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. Menzies, has announced that an enemy raider heavily shelled the island of Nauru soon after daybreak today.

On December 8 ships sheltering from a gale off Nauru were seen to be attacked by two enemy sea raiders. Only two of seven ships which were in the Nauru and Ocean Islands area since reported their arrival at another port and by December 20 the five vessels were presumed lost. There was no mention in the reports of that occasion ot shelling of the island itself, and Sir Albert Ellis, New Zealand representative on the British Phosphate Commission, stated that there was no reason to believe that the cantilever and other plant on Nauru Island had been damaged by enemy action.

■Much valuable plant has been erected at Nauru Island since the commission began working the deposits at the end of the Great War. Formerly the island belonged to Germany, an'd between 1906 and 1919 the deposits were worked by the AngloGerman Pacific Phosphate Company, which also operated at Ocean Island and elsewhere. The company’s Nauru and Ocean Island interests were purchased by the British, Australian, and New Zealand Governments for £3,500,000 in 1919, and the phosphate commission, consisting of one representative of each Government, was set up that year. The construction of a great canti-

lover wiiuri nt a cost oi uuuui, has been a major development carried out by the commission. The phosphate is carried out to the end of the cantilever by an endless chain of buckets, and is "tipped automatically into the hold of the vessel moored below. The commission employs . a white staff of about 90 cn the island, many of the employees having their wives and families with them. The white population also includes an administration staff and a number of missionaries. There are also about 1400 Chinese coolies and about 100 Chinese artisans in the commission’s employ, while the native Nauru Islanders total about .1700.