Ship Afire; Crew Saved

Northern Advocate, 13 January 1948, Page 5

Ship Afire; Crew Saved

NEW YORK, Mon. (12.30 p.m.)—All 46 members of the crew of the ship which caught fire 900 miles east of New York have been rescued.

They had taken to the lifeboats. The ship was an Army transport, th& Joseph V. Connolly. Another Army transport, the General Callan, picked up the men from four lifeboats, after an air and surface search.

The first call from the Connolly stated that she was adrift and out of control as the result of fire in the engineroom.

Later reports said the fire was spreading.

The Connolly was en route to Europe with 5000 empty caskets to bring back American war dead. She brought the first American war dead home from Europe in October, 1947. MANY SHIPS NEAR SCENE The first ship on the reported scene of the fire, the Morrison B. Waite, failed to find lifeboats or wreckage. Then an American Army Flying Fortress reported sighting the wreckage of the Connolly and two lifeboats. Earlier in the day the Callan had x-eported sighting an object on hexradar which, she thought, was the Connolly’s wreckage. The Callan was then 22 miles from where the crew took to the boats and was the first surface craft to sight the Connolly, although at least half a dozen others were in the vicinity, or steaming to the scene, some 450 miles south of Newfoundland and in the much-travelled North Atlantic route.