KOEBENHAVN MYSTERY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 4408, 23 October 1934, Page 4

KOEBENHAVN MYSTERY.

SUPPOSED END OP VESSEL.

A message in a bottle throws the first light on the possible fate of the five-masted Danish training ship Koebenhavn, which has not been seen since she left Buenos Aires for Capetown on December 14, 1928, carrying a crew of GO, including 45 cadets of the Danish merchant marine.

Liborio Justo, son of the President of Argentina, states that he met at Port Stanley, in the Falkland Islands, a Scotsman, who had been sent there from the whaling station at South Shetland with a fractured arm. This man, who had spent years in southern latitudes, showed Justo a translation he had made of the contents of some papers in a bottle found on one of the deserted Bouvet Islands. It was a diary, supposed to have been kept by a member of the Koebenhavn’s crew. Justo copied the notes.

The diary, which opens with an entry on January 20, is continued to March 2, the name of the vessel not being stated. From January 25 to February 14 mention is made of the enormous icebergs crossing the ship’s path. On February 21 the ship was abandoned, and on the following day the crew saw her crushed between two icebergs and ‘■reduced to splinters.” The last entry, on March 2, reads: —“We have stopped at the point where the sea cuts us off. In front of us the wide ocean is covered with bergs. It is snowing and a gale- blows. To-night, while everyone is sleeping, I make this last entry. I realise our frightful fate. Everything convinces me that this sea has taken us beyond the limits of this world.”