CALL FOR HELP

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 149, 21 December 1938, Page 14

CALL FOR HELP

FRENCH EXPEDITION

COLONY ON LONELY ISLAND

SCURVY AND STRIFE

(By Telegraph—Press Association—-Copyright.)

(Received December 21, 2.30 p.m.) PARIS. December 20.

An amateur short-wave wireless operator in the United States picked up an SOS from the French trawler He de Bourbon at the island of St. Paul in the Indian Ocean, which was passed on to Admiral Lackey, commander of Jhe American squadron visiting Villefranche. Admiral Lackey advised' the French Government, which ordered the Madagascar radio station to make contact with the trawler. The trawler left Brittany last May carrying forty-eight members of an expedition to establisn a lobster fishery and form a French colony at St. Paul. ) The SOS reported that the trawler's coal had run out as a result of bad weatAer and that the position was critical. The expedition is under the command of M. Horn de Boar. The island of St. Paul acquired ill- repute as a result of the failure of an expedition in 1929, which was wiped out bydisease. A French warship is speeding to the rescue The wireless operator reports that the colony was suffering from scurvy and that there was also dissension among the members of the expedition. The state of affairs was serious. Each of the five married couples, among whom there are two babies, are living in separate quarters. The expedition intended to spend three years at St Paul.

St. Paul is a volcanic island in the South Indian Ocean and is attached to the General Government of Madagascar by legislative decree. It has an area of two and three-quarter square miles and the highest point is 862 ft. In 1929 there were 108 persons on the island. . . '