MID OCEAN RESCUE

Evening Star, Issue 16351, 17 February 1917, Page 12

MID OCEAN RESCUE

PROM TINY CRAFT. ’ The story of the rescue in mid-ocean of the captain ami five men of a schooner after they had suffered 23 days of hardship on their water-logged vessel was told by the officers of the rescue ship, the American oil tank ship, Gold Shell, which reached port recently. Her arrival ended a six-months’ voyage, during which she struck a mine in the war zone and was nearly sunk. The shipwrecked vessel was the British schooner Arthur H. Wight, of St. John’s, N.P., Captain Diamond, bound from Alicante, Spain, to her home port with salt. She was of 99 tons register. According to Captain Hayes of the Gold Shell, his lookout sighted "distress signals on a low-h-ing hulk in latitude 42.47 and longitude 56.28 on the morning of Novem ber 28. Although a heavy sea was inning, a boat was sent over the side of the distressed vessel The rescuers found the schooner waterlogged, the bulwarks, deck houses, and lifeboats swept away, and the sails and upper spars gone. In the shelter of the mainmast, the captain and crew wore huddled, exhausted. The rescuers set fire to the schooner to prevent her from being a menace to navigation. Captain Diamond said his vessel left Alicante early in September. After being buffeted by head winds for weeks, lie ran into a north-west ga!c on November 5. From that time the crew fought hunger, thirst, and the elements. They had given themselves up for lost when the tanker arrived. The Gold Shell left New Orleans for Bordeaux in June. On July 10 she struck a mine in the Bay of Biscay, and suffered considerable damage forward. She reached Bordeaux in a sinking condition, and after discharging her cargo and making temporary repairs proceeded to Rotterdam, where she lay for two months.

Be it over so homely, there’s no face like vour own.