DESOLATE OCEAN SPOTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 January 1930, Page 9

DESOLATE OCEAN SPOTS

SUPPLY NEWS FOR THE WORLD.

Three lonely islands are “in the world’s news” just at present, separated by many thousand miles from each other, remote, and little known. Far away in the Pacific Ocean lies Gardner Island, one of the Phoenix Group, a typical South Sea island, 500 miles from the nearest islands. They are all low coral islands, surrounded by reefs; there is no fresh water, but plenty of coconuts. On Gardner Island a British ship, the Norwich City, was wrecked a week or so agoi Eleven of the crew were drowned in trying to swim through the breakers to the land, and 21 managed to reach the island.

Fortunately the wireless operator was able to send out an S. O. S., and two steamers went to the island to pick up the survivors. Enormous breakers prevented their getting in touch with the shore, but communication with the castaways was established by means of the old-fashioned rocket line.

This dramatic scene (says a writer in the Sun News-Pictorial) occurred right in the heart of the Pacific; Gardner Island is right out of the world. Before the introduction of wireless the survivors might have remained there for ever, but wireless has been the means of saving them. Kingsford Smith, in his flight across the Pacific, passed over this lonely group.

Many passengers to and from Australia via the Cape route have sighted the island'of St. Paul, which lies midway between Africa and Australia. It stands up out of the ocean, the tip of a mountain peak rising from the depths below. On this remote island, which belongs to France, a French fishingcompany established a colony of 120 persons for seal and whale fishing. They -were equipped with a small wireless transmitting plant, but suddenly silence fell over the island. Repeated calls have failed to elicit any response, and so the steamer Euripides, which left Capetown on December 2 for Fremantle, will heave-to off the island and try and get into touch to see if all is well there. Fifty miles to the north lies Amsterdam Island, and in line weather, when the passenger ships pass between the two, people on deck can see both the islands at the same time. Still further south, lying in latitude 52 south, are the Heard and MacDonald Islands. Sir Douglas Mawson, in the exploring ship Discovery, has announced his intention of calling at this remote spot on his way down south to the Antarctic ice. No more desolate spot than Heard Island can be imagined. Though in the same relative latitude as another island in the Northern Hemisphere, England, Heard Island is beset with glaciers, which stream down the mountain sides into the sea. The island itself is 6000 feet high, and was discovered 80 years ago by Captain Heard, when on his way to Australia in the good ship Oriental. It was not visited again until 1910, when Lieutenant Hobart Seymour, in search of the missing Waratah, touched at the island. Heard Island is an active volcano, and presents the curious and awe-inspiring spectacle of being at once glacier covered and lava swept. It is visible from a great distance in clear weather, by reason of the great clouds of smoke and steam which are intermittently emitted from the volcano cone, 6000 feet above sea-level. Heard Island lies in the “Roaring ’Fifties,” and in the old days was often sighted by sailing ships seeking a fast passage to the southward. In these days of direct steamship routes, however, it is never sighted, and as it is a dangerous and fog-bound island, the few ships that have been in that locality. have given it a wide berth.