MYSTERY SHIP

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 58, 5 September 1940, Page 5

MYSTERY SHIP

SIGHTED OFF COAST

WAS OPPORTUNITY MISSED?

Behind the mining of the Niagara and the shelling of the Turakina by a raider may lie a story of a missed opportunity on the part of the captain and officers of .a British merchant vessel, says the Sydney "Sun."

News has reached Sydney from New Zealand that a strange vessel was sighted under the lee of the land of one of the small islands of the lonely Kermadfec Group, to the north of New Zealand.

The captain and officers mistook the vessel for a British ship that they knew well. Their own ship was bound from New Zealand to islands further north. Later during their voyage they saw the British ship and at once realised that the vessel near the island was a stranger.

On returning to New Zealand they reported the sighting and the circumstances placed a strong suspicion upon the stranger. But by that time the Niagara had been mined off the New Zealand coast. ' ,

In New Zealand, among merchantmen, there is a belief that the one raider accounted for both British ships, although the Niagara was lost on June 19 and the Turakina was not shelled until August 20.

Officers of one British vessel claim that they struck a mine just before the Niagara went down and that the mine did not explode. One night, when close to the spot where the Niagara sank, they felt two bumps, one coming quickly upon the other from for'ard.

One of the mines recovered off the coast later had two of its horns missing. The detonators had failed to explode the charge. ,

Referring to the presence of the raider in the Tasman, Mr. Roy Alexander, author of the "Cruise of the Sea Raider Wolf," who was a prisoner on the Wolf for nine months in the last war, said that although a raider would be more handicapped now than the Wolf was, by the greater development of radio, if the raider was an oil burner she would have a much greater cruising range than the Wolf, which used to strip her victims of their bunkers before sinking them. "BRISTLING WITH GUNS." Another Sydney story says that a mystery vessel, "fairly bristling with guns," was sighted off the New Zealand coast on August 14 by an American liner. This was reported by a Sydney shipping official who returned from Tahiti in the liner. The sinking of the Turakina on August 20 by an enemy raider in the Tasman naturally aroused keen interest in Australia, and there was some caustic comment at the release of the news in New Zealand before the newspapers 'or radio here were allowed to mention it. The shipping official said, that the mystery vessel passed within ten miles of the American liner.

The liner's officers and passengers got a good view 'of the ship through strong glasses. She carried no identification marks or flags and was about 16,000 tons. Neither the mystery ship nor the liner signalled each other or changed course. The sea meeting occurred when the American liner was about twenty-six hours from. Auckland, from Suva.