RESCUE OF THE HAMMONIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18195, 14 September 1922, Page 7

RESCUE OF THE HAMMONIA.

"LUSITANIA AVENGED." GERMAN WOMEN'S PRAISE. ENGLISHMAN'S GALLANTRY. 'By Telesrraph-—Press Association— Copyright A. and N.Z. LONDON, Sept. 12. Bcarinsr 380 of the rescued passengers of the German steamer Hammonia, which foundered in the Atlantic, the British steamer, Kinfauns Castle, arrived at Southampton to-day. One newspaper heads the accounts of the rescue given by survivors, "The Lusitania.Avenged." Captain Dav, of the Kinfauns Castle, who was taken prisoner by a German submarine during the war, has received from the German and Spanish women, who were aboard the Hammonia, a letter of thanks in which they state: "We shall always pray for the British mercantile marine/' In an interview. Captain Day said that when he sighted the sinking ship exhausted passengers were clinging to the half-submerged lifeboats and rafts which were drifting about the ship. The rescue was carried out with great difficulty owing to the heavv seas. One lifeboat, after having disembarked seven rescued passengers, was stove in, but all hands were saved. He had not seen such tragic scenes in his 50 years at sea. A member of the crew on the Kinfauns Castle said that the first boat picked up was full of men, while women and children were still aboard the doomed ship. The first man up the ladder, a German fireman, nearly upset the collapsible boat in his hurry to get aboard. Another boat came alongside full of water, in which little children clung pitifully together.

Mr. W. H. Jubb, the only Englishman aboard tho Hammonia, said the passengers were blown about like shuttlecocks, the sea being mountainous. He hurried to tho deck, being awakened. by shrieks and stampeding to find the starboard gunwale almost touching the water, and the passengers clinging to stanchions and anything else they could grasp. He pulled several women and children from the water. An ugly rush for the boats was made by Spaniards. He assisted the German officers to keep them at bay while the women and children wero put into the boats, several of which were smashed or capsized.

Later accounts demonstrate Mr. Jubb's conspicuous gallantry. German women give him high praise. One said: "He helped us by being an Englishman. I don't know what we should have dome without him. He saved the women and children."

Mr. Jubb said that some Spanish woman tied four babies together and threw them into the sea, hoping they would be saved, but all were drowned. "When the Kinfauns Castlo was sighted," he added, " I was so overjoyed that I started to* sing wrip r >erary.' Her crew were magnificent. No one was lost after her arrival." Mr. Jubb is a foreman papermaker, and is a native of Barnsley.

The captain of the Hammonia said that as far as ho knew all were saved except eight sailors and seven passengers. He attributed the disaster to the terrible weather, the seas breaking over and steadily fil'.inT the ship. He left the ship seven minutes before she sank. Other estimates place the loss of life at between 30 and 60.

The Soldier Prince, which -went to the Hammonia's rescue, reports that two boats containing 30 women and children capsized, none escaping.