BIG LINER BURNED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21411, 8 February 1933, Page 6

BIG LINER BURNED

11 DISASTER IN CHANNEL || SWIFT RUSH OF FLAMES fi ' THRILLING RESCUE WORK If J; ; The beautiful and almost new 42,000-ton |i [ French liner L'Atlantique, owned by the Compagnie de Navigation Sud-Atlantique, of Bordeaux, was destroyed by fire in the English Channel on January 4. Her position at the time was off the Casquets—which have seen other tragic catastrophes j 1 —and between Guernsey and Alderney, the Channel Islands, about 75 miles from 1 Cherbourg. She was on her way from Pauillac, riear Bordeaux, to Havre, for overhaul and repair. There were no passengers on board, but she carried a cornel plement of 228, including three women—a saleswoman, a manicurist and a masseuse. These were all saved, but 12 male members of the crew lost their lives. The liner's Commander, Captain Schoofs, imd 210 officers and other members of the crew were landed by rescue ship 3 at Cherbourg. Twenty-seven of them were slightly injured. A dramatic narrative of the disaster uras given by Captain Schoofs on landing. I - He said that the wireless operator's room ; : was quickly enveloped and became a deathtrap, making it impossible to send out more than one S.O.S. message. One of the liner's boats overturned as it was being lowered, resulting in loss of life. / " We were off Guernsey at 3.30 a.m.," Si' Captain Schoofs said, " when it ,was reported by? a night-watchman that a fire ? f had broken out in a first-class cabin—

just as in the case of the Georges Philip

par last May. We lost no time in trying to master the outbreak. There was not

a moment before every one of the 225 officers and men were at their posts. I thought we had succeeded in getting the fire under, but we were beaten by the very inflam[l mable varnish,, which acted like fuel to M? the fire. I was horrified at the speed with which the flames spread along the electric cables from cabin to cabin. Soon the whole s| ship was ablaze from stem to stern. Wireless Operator's Message " The ■ wireless operator tried to give t| the alarm, but his room was almost immediately a mass of flame and smoke. managed'' to send out one 5.0.5., which was picked up feebly only by Bleville, near Havre, which relayed it to other ships in the vicinity. Then the operator had to make his escape. " At 6 o'clock we had to abandon all •* hope of saving the ship. I ordered the J crew to take to the boats. Unfortunately • in one case the hawser broke or was | burned, ahd the boat overturned, throw--1 inz the occupants into the sea. Other members of the crew were penned up in the boiler : room, where they died of suffocation." ....... j Captain Schoofs added that he jumped t! into the sea with seven or eight other men I last of 411* and was picked up by the : 'Achilles. He paid a high tribute to the help rendered by the various ships which I* * rusned to .the rescue. I Captain Schoofs did not speak much of what he did himself, but other officers and members of the crew were high in their praise of his bravery and tenacity. «« We thought he was dead on three occasions,7 said the third officer, " but he appeared out of the flames with his clothes burning, and his Annamite boy following him with/a bucket of water like a

shadow. . . , j " After the captain gave th© signal to abandon ship, he stood by the rails watching the men launch the boats and row away, and it was only when the last ? " boat had left that he, with two other officers and five men, jumped overboard from the bow and swam out to the \i, Achilles." Bravery of the Cabin Boy The captain's cabin boy, the first officer said, twice saved his master's life by dragging ,him from the flaming corridors when he was collapsing half-asphyxiated as he tried to make his way to the heart of the fire. " I saw the little cabin boy with his half-burned clothes and singed hair as he landed at Cherbourg," a newspaper carrespondent said. "He was clutching closely a packet wrapped up in watersoaked rags. • I asked him what it was, and he told me that it was his master's personal papers and money -which he had gone back to fetch from his cabin. " It was a dramatic scene when, by the light- of the red columns of flames mounting to the sky, the crew of th» giant liner took to the boats. Rarely has any great liner in danger held such a concourse of ships and tugs rush to her assistance. When the great hulk was blazing there were about 20 ships standing off or proceeding ti> her assistance." The three women survivors told a thrilling story 6f the way in which they left the burning ship. They were in bed when the fire alarm sounded, and having entered a lifeboat found that it could not be lowered owing to some fault in the davit gear. They were half-suffocated by smoke when one of them seized a hatchet and cut the rope, so that the boat crashed down into the sea. One of the last sailors to leave the ship had just gone to sleep at the end of his watch when the first alarm was given. He had no lifebelt, but swam for two hours and then was picked up. Scene From English Cliffs

A vivid description was given by another writer of the view of the burning liner which was obtained* from the cliffs at Weymouth on the English shore. He (said:— ' " At one time the liner, red with rust caused by the intense heat, was only two miles from the dreaded Portland Race—where Channel currents meet—and if she had been driven into this by the strong tide she would probably have sunk. As darkness approached the derelict shell of the linfer was seen on the horizon high in the water. She was still surrounded by the tugs continuing their ' feverish guttle to get her under control. " It was a spectacle such as those who eaw it are never likely to witness again, and until' the clouds of night rang down the curtain on the tragedy telescopes and binoculars were directed toward where the smouldering liner, a veritable sepulchre of fire, /was disappearing below the horizon. Long afterward the watchers stayed on the shore following in their thoughts the heroic efforts of those on board the tugs in their desperate efforts to get the great vessel in tow."