THE JOHN A. CAMPBELL.

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 67, 16 September 1922, Page 12

THE JOHN A. CAMPBELL.

Burnt to the water line by a <ir« which broke, out in a cargo of pppra. on ißt August, the well'known.. Island schooner John A. Campbell now lies a, useless hulk in a pretty palm-fringed lagoon at Tarawa, in the Gilbert Islands.' With a quantity of general wgo, the John A. Campbell, which wag owned by Burns, Philp, and Co., sailed from Brie., bane on llth June, and arrived at the Gilbert Islands at the end of July. The John A. Campbell was under, orders to loiid 545 tons of copra, for San Francisco, and there were only: about ' 13 tonß more to load, when, at a quarter of an hour before noon on Ist August the. alarm was given that smoke was issuing from the after hatch. Every cf- ■ fort was made to reach the- seat of the fire, but the inflammable nature of the copra cargo rendered all endeavour futile. Fc/ ten hours the band of fire-' "fighters struggled to extinguish, the outbreak, and at TO p.m. the vessel was reluctantly abandoned. For three or four days the John. A. Campbell continued to burn, and when an inspection was made eight days after the ; fire be- «. gan only the shell of the vessel remained. _ Captain Ferem, with his wife and family and crew, escaped uninjured, and after a short stay they; were .taken to Nauru and later to Newcastle. Captain. ■ Ferem is a native 'of San Frsricieco. The crew comprised a naturalised British subject, a New Zealander, Americans, and Scandinavians. Captain Farem ■is ' the descendant of* a seafaring .family, and it is a itrange coincidence that hig . father, who was also captain, of a vessel, was the victim of a fire -at sea.', He was lost with all hands on the schooner Bertha Dobleer, which was burnt while off ' the coast of New Zealand. The hull of th« Bertha Dobleer wai laier waehed *shore"" near Gisborne. The, John A.; Campbell was a four-masted .wooden schooner of 54f> tons gross,' -and her dimensions were i—Length, 161 ft; beam, 36ft; and depth, 12ft. She was formerly' known as th« J.'\y. Westland, and war built 4n 1895 by Hall Bros., at Port Blakely, Puget Sound. She was purchased about two years ago by Burns, Philp, and Co. in San Francisco, for thY copra trade.