WRECK OF THE PARISIANA

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXII, Issue LXII, 6 May 1911, Page 9

WRECK OF THE PARISIANA

CASTAWAY'S AWFUL STOEI

A story that rivals Ballantyne or Henty was told at Plymouth by R. Daniells, F. Melville, and J. Santos, who reached London on March 10th, on the P. and 0. Company's steamer China. They "were tlte first to reach England of the crew of the Glasgow steamer Parisiana, which was burnt down to the water's edge on the voyage from New

York to Melbourne

When the crew abandoned the steamer and took to the boats they had been fighting fire for four days. The decks were red-hot and the plates of the hull were masses of molten metal. One man, George Tate, of Liverpool, lost his life in the battle with the flames. He was overwhelmed in an avalanche of coal when the sailors forced teir way through the bulkhead to get at the seat of the fire.

Once the men were in the boats their course was shaped for the island of St. Paul, but so terrible were the seas that before they reached land their boats were leaking, and all the lifebuoys, gear, and clothes- -even the provisions except a few biscuits and a tew pints of water —had been thrown overboard to lighten them. It was five days before they all landed. One man —Enginer Bannon—perished on the way, and Fireman Heimann was put ashore, a raving madman, to die in a few hours.

The men found a roofless shanty on the island, where twenty years ago a French warship had-left a store of preserved meatj biscuits, and clothing. They were twenty-eight days on the island, and their only drink was obtained from the hot springs of the volcano, which rises nearly a thousand feet from the shore. They had to cool the water before they could drink it, and even then it was so charged with sulphur and other chemicals that it caused the men's skin to peel in strips and their bodies to swell in an alarming way. Rescue at last came from the steamer British Transport, which sighted the castaways' signal of distress hoisted on a flagstaff on the beach.