DRIFTING EIGHT BAYS

Evening Star, Issue 25677, 28 December 1945, Page 5

DRIFTING EIGHT BAYS

DRAMA OF BAY OF BISCAY SCHOONER GREW SAVED AT ELEVENTH HOUR (Rec. 10.45 a.m.) LONDON, Dec. 27. After eight days of drifting at the mercy of the gale, which sometimes reached 100 miles per hour, 19 Frenchmen were rescued from a three-masted schooner in the Bay of Biscay on Christmas Day. The story off their adventure was told upon arrival at Plymouth in the Belgian liner Copacabana, which saved them. The men were the crew and passengers of the sailing ship Saint Yvonne, bound from Newfoundland to Bordeaux. The ship was overtaken by a cyclone on December 16. Her sails were torn to shred 6, her steering gear damaged, and the forecastle head smashed in. On Christmas Eve the look-out of an American steamer saw the schooner wallowing in the trough of huge seas in the Bay of Biscay. As its own boats had been damaged by the cyclone, the American ship could not. lower boats, but it sent out the SOS which brought the Belgian liner to the scene.

The captain of the schooner said: “ We managed to keep afloat only by working the pumps 45 minutes every hour. We were almost exhausted and some had given up hope when the American ship saw us.”