DRAMA OF THE SEA

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 125, 30 May 1930, Page 11

DRAMA OF THE SEA

PRAYERS AFTER WRECK

VOYAGE OF THE MARORO

(By Telegraph.)

(Special to "The Evening Post.")

AUCKLAND, This Day.

People who say that romance is dead have not heard the story of the Fischer family's amazing voyage across the Pacific from Auckland until they were shipwrecked on the veef-bouud coast of Tutuila, in the Samoan Group.

The four children and the mother were more like Indian famine victims when they were taken ashore from the wreck and an unforgettable scene was when the children, immediately they got ashore, dropped on their knees and prayed.

tour hundred natives who had seen the boat eomu ashore flocked down to the beach, ant! all knult and prayed in. i-ompany with, the little children.

It wa,- a dramatic 'end to a remarkable voyage in a little bit of an auxiliary yacht only 38ft long, navigated practically single-handed over 1(300 miles of ocean; often storm-tossed, by a.man who had lost his sextant 'overboard the day after leaving Auckland, and who ■ had only a sixpenny schoolboy 's atlas for a chart. He had to find his way over the trackless ocean by the stars and dead reckoning. Fischer, who was the hero of this astonishing feat, told the story to a "Star" reporter this morning, and it was the first tinfe' a true account of the voyage was heard.

It will bo recalled that when Mr. Fischer arrived at Apia he was arrested for allegedly wrongfully taking the yacht Maroro from Auckland, and-only yesterday at Auckland Police Court was ho discharged, the prosecution offering no evidence.