SHIP'S CREW SAVED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20174, 7 February 1929, Page 10

SHIP'S CREW SAVED.

LOST ITALIAN STEAMER.

GALLANT AMERICAN SEAMEN

NEW YORK, Jan. 2G. Captain Guiseppe Faurloro, of the foundered Italian steamer Florida (2500 tons), who has arrived with the 32 members of his crew, on board the rescuing liner America, related an amazing story of the fight for life during the last hours of his doomed ship.

They left Pensacola, Florida, on January 10 for Naples, he said, -with a general cargo and a big deckload of lumber. During boisterous weather in the following week, in the Gulf of Mexico, they lost a man overboard.

" At midnight on Saturday," the captain said, " I found that we had lost control of tho ship, which did not answer the wheel. The chief engineer reported that tho rudder chains had broken.

"On Tuesday it was evident that everything we were doing was in vain, so we sent out an S.O.S, call. " Violent seas swept £>ay the bridge, chartroom, several lifeboats, and part of the deck load, the ship listing to the starboard, right down to tho gunwales. On Wednesday we were in continuous communication with the America, but I could not give her our exact position.

"At six o'clock that evening wo sighted the America. My crew word all in lifebelts. Our lights were all extinguished, and it was a magnificent manoeuvre for the America to como alongside. I had no rockets, and I could do nothing to help as a lifeboat, manned by volunteers, approached. They camo to the lee side of tho ship, just in time, and threw a lino aboard.

The chief engineer and I were the last to leave. Wc threw ourselves into iho sea, for tho line had parted, but were quickly picked up as I said a last goodbye to the sinking Florida."