MARINE WARFARE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 253, 25 September 1939, Page 9

MARINE WARFARE.

PROTOCOL CONTRAVENED

LONDON, Sept. 23

A Ministry of Information bulletin announces that hbpe must be abandoned for the lloyal Sceptre (4853 tons), which was sunk by a U-boat on September 6, 300 miles to the westward of IJshant.

The vessel sent an' S.O.S. indicating that she was being gunned, and that the crew had been ordered to > leave the ship as she was sinking. Signals were received from Danish and Norwegian boats, which searched the locality, but found no traces of the boats.

It was hoped that the crew had been picked up by some fishing boats or ship without a radio, but since nothing more has been heard for nearly three weeks it is feared that the officers. and crew are lost, as victims of

the U-boat warfare being waged in contravention of the protocol signed by Germany .in November, 1936—paragraph 4 of the London Haval Treaty, which makes it clear that no warship, submarine, or otherwise, is justified in sinking a merchant ship unless the crew has been placed in safety, and that open boats cannot be-considered a place of safety unless they are in calm weather and close to land or a rescuing ship.

A German submarine sank the -Finnish steamer Martii Ragna.r, in the Baltic, states a message from Stockholm. She was carrying a cargo of wood pulp to England. The submarine ordered the ship to stop, and the crew took to the boats. When it had towed the vessel five miles from the coast she sank. The crew rowed all night and reached the shore in the morning. A later message states that two German submarines sank a second Finnish steamer, the Walma. Eighteen of the crew were saved. The British steamer Akenside. laden with coal, was sunk by a submarine 10 miles from tlie Norwegian coast, stales a Bergen message. A Norwegian war-ship-picked up 26 members of the crew from its lifeboats. MISHAP TO PATROL SHIP. The Secretary of the Admiralty to day announced that H.M.S. Ivittiwake struck a mine in the English Channel. It is regretted that five members of the crew are missing and believed to have been killed, and two others are in hospital. The ship has returned to harbour for repairs..

H.M.S. Kittiwake is a patrol vessel of 530 tons, mounting one four-inch gun and eight light giins. She is a vessel of the First 'Anti-Submarine Flotilla and was commissioned at Chatham in April, 1937.