VESSEL’S PLIGHT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 21, 23 December 1938, Page 8

VESSEL’S PLIGHT.

SHORTAGE OF SUPPLIES.

PARIS, Dec. 21. It is learned that the vessel He de Bourbon is not short of food, but is in a plight as a result of a shortage of other supplies. A further wireless message from the trawler states that women and children were landed on an unnamed Indian Ocean island. The commander, M. de Boar, apparently sold out his interests in the expedition at Reunion Island before proceeding to St. Paul because the quarrels among the married-couples convinced him it was impossible to live amicably at St. Paul.

An amateur short-wave radio operator in the United States picked up an S.O.S. from'the French trawler, lie de Bourbon, at the.island of St. Paul in the Indian Ocean, which he passed on to Admiral Lackey, Commander of the American Squadron visiting Villefranche. The trawler left Brittany last' May carrying 48 members of an expedition to establish a lobster fishery and form a French colony at St. Paul. The S.O.S. reported that the coal had run out as the result of bad weather, and the crew’s, position was critical. ’ The expedition is under the command of M. Horn de Boar. St. Paul acquired ill-repute as the result of the failure of an expedition in 1929, which was wiped out by disease. Dissension among the members of the expedition was serious and each of the five married couples,-, among whom there were two babies, were living in separate quarters. The members of the expedition intended to spend three years on St. Paul.