LAUNCH CREW'S ORDEAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20528, 1 April 1930, Page 15

LAUNCH CREW'S ORDEAL.

FIRE DESTROYS CRAFT. SHARK-INFESTED WATERS. When they were brought by a rescue party to a farm near Gingin, Western Australia, one night recently, Messrs. Haakon Stang, aged 22, Maurice Mcßolt, aged 29, Charles Akroyd Stuart, aged 22, Richard P.' S. Burt, aged 20, and Frederick Micah, aged 23, the crew of the steam launch* Arab, which foundered off the coast about 100 miles north of Fremantle, told a story of extraordinary hardships.

Shortly after the Arab left Fremantle for the north coast on a shark-fishing expedition, Mr. Micah sustained an abdominal injury when he was thrown against a boiler by the pitching of the craft. About noon the next day fire broke out in the engine-room, and efforts to extinguish the flames proving unavailing, the crew launched a 10-foot dinghy, which could hold only three of them, includl ing the injured man. With the other four men taking turns, two at a time, to swim near the dinghy through shark-in-fested waters, the shore—five miles distant—was reached after - six hours' struggle. Supporting their injured -companion, the four men fought their way nine miles through dense undergrowth, and luckily stumbled across a watering-place for cattle, where, exhausted and tortured by thirst, they were found by a dingo trapper and his companion. The Arab was destroved.