29 DEATHS BY DROWNING IN NAVAL TRAGEDY
(Rec. 10 a.m.) LONDON, Oct. 18. The Evening Standard states that 29 members of the crew of the air-craft-carrier, Illustrious, were drowned when a Liberty boat capsized in Portland harbour.
An 18-year-old Dartmouth Naval College scholarship boy, Midshipman Richard Clough, who to the end tried to trim the Liberty boat so that it did not capsize, was the hero of the tragedy, in which he and 28 companions were drowned, says the Daily Mail.
Clough called to the 50 occupants of the boat, which was his first command, to keep calm. He told half the men to go forward when water started coming over the boat’s side. Clough was the last man in the pinnace and went down with it. He never regained consciousness when later picked up. Loud-speakers aboard the aircraftcarrier Illustrious, when the drowning men’s cried were heard, gave the order: “Every man who can swims on deck and give a hand.” Five ratings and Royal Marines dived 30 feet over the Illustrious’s side and rescued some of. the ratings struggling in the sea.
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/GEST19481019.2.54
Bibliographic details
Greymouth Evening Star, 19 October 1948, Page 5
Word Count
18329 DEATHS BY DROWNING IN NAVAL TRAGEDY Greymouth Evening Star, 19 October 1948, Page 5
Using This Item
The Greymouth Evening Star Co Ltd is the copyright owner for the Greymouth Evening Star. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of the Greymouth Evening Star Co Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Log in