MARINE TRAGEDY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 141, 19 May 1925, Page 5

MARINE TRAGEDY.

SINKING OF JAPANESE SHIP,

MADNESS TO LAUNCH RESCUE BOATS. NEW~YORK, April 23. The passengers on the \Viute Star liner Homeric are almost equally divided on the question of whether or not Captain Roberts upheld the best traditions of British seamen when he failed to rescue the crew of the Japanese cargo steamer, Raifuku Mam, which foundered, with all hands, during a terrible gale in the North Atlantic this week.

Captain Roberts declares that it would have been madness to launch boats in such a sea, and is supported in this view by a clergyman, who prayed as the Japanese sailors were swept away before the eyes of the 400 passengers crowding tlie liner’s decks. “During my 40 years at sea I never witnessed such a horrible marine disaster,” said Captain Roberts. Mr Paul Alberti, one of the passengers, argued that if rafts had been launched from the Homeric and had been allowed to drift towards the Japanese ship a few might have been saved.

Rev. James Talbot, of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, who prayed with bared head on the Homeric deck as tho Japanese drowned, said he thought that Captain Roberts did everything possible. “1 finally saw the heads and shoulders cf 20 Japanese on the bridge before they disappeared. It was most tragic. The rigging and smoke-stack were dripping with water, and the heavy seas often hid them from sight, while the same waves splashed right over the Homeric.

“Our ship poured oil to calm the water, and we went so close that a collision was imminent. We were only 200 yards away.” Another passenger said that Captain Roberts would have been a murderer if he had sent the boats out.