AN EPISODE OF THE SAMOA HURRICANE OF 1889.

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 52, 29 August 1925, Page 16

AN EPISODE OF THE SAMOA HURRICANE OF 1889.

Snatched from death in a storm-lashed sea that claimed the lives of scores of his comrades, a young American naval cadet survived to visit Sydney as commander of Battleship Divisions of the United States fleet. Talking to a Sydney "Sun" representative on the eve of the de|)arture of the fleet, Vice-Admiral H. A. Wiley recalled his terrible experience iv the hurricane that swept Samoa in 1889. The evening of 15th March" was calm— the harbour as smooth as glass. Within 12 hours a furious cyclone was raging. Before daybreak the German ship Eber was swamped by the mountainous waves, and went to tho bottom with .71 men. The Adler was lifted like a straw, and flung on Matafele reef, 25 of her crew perishing. The third German ship, the Olga, was beached later. • The fate of the Eber and Adler determined Captain Kane, of"the Calliope, to take a chance, and getting up steam, he made for the open sea, despite the risk of being blown on to the reefs. The sailors on the U.S.S. Trenton stood and cheered the British ship as she beat.her way out against the hurricane. The American ships, the Trenton, Vandalia, and Nipsic, could not have followed her example had they wished. With anchors down and full steam ahead, they were not able to hold their own. The Nipsic was the first to go ashore on the afternoon of 17th March, and later, the Vandalia grounded. Though only 50 yards from shore, it was impossible to get a line to her, and the seas swept her decks with auch fury that the cre\v had to take to the rigging. One by one they ■were washed from their hold, or fell through fatigue; more than 100 perishing, thus. i

Among tha iiirvivora from the Vandalia was H. H. Wiley—then a cadet, now a weather-beaten admiral. x

"I remember it all right," he said. "Both the Nipsic and the Trenton went aground and most of us transferred to the Trenton. Then I swam to the Nipsic with the idea of getting a line ashore, but there was not a soul on board. It was a question of my own life "then. The waves were breaking over my head, but once when I got it above water I spied 'a companion ladder that had been washed from one of the ships. I got to it and clung on but every now and again, it would be turned right over. How I got ashore I don't quite know."

So the telling of the rest of the story is left to Mr. W. Blacklock, now a Sydney business man, who was American Vice-Consul in Samoa at the time of the hurricane.

"There's a river rnnning out to sea at that spot, and anything caught in the current is carried right out—■bodies were picked up 20 miles away after the humcane. I thought I saw a head drifting towards the river, mouth. I lost sight of it. A second later I saw it again, and shouted to ,the Samoan chief. A line of Samoans ran out on the sandspit at the river mouth, and formed a chain by holding hands. They were just in time to reach the man before the current caught him. He was quite insensible when they brought him up on the beach." . Vice-Admiral Wiley only learnt that day that Mr. Blacklock was still in Sydney.

"Would you mind doing something for me when you go ashore," he said to "The Sun" representative. "Please go and tfill Mr. Blacklock for me that it is the disappointment of my life that I didn't see him, and if he enn possibly find timA to come aboard before we sail I'd bo very, very pleased to meet him again." The message was conveyed to Mr. Blacklock. "I hardly thought the Admiral would remember—it's 36 years ago," he said.