SWEPT OVERBOARD

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22401, 23 April 1936, Page 15

SWEPT OVERBOARD

FATE OF FAMILY EYE-WITNESS' STORY NO WARNING OF DEATH [from our own correspondent 1 MELBOURNE. April 17 When the Nairana berthed after her perilous experience her captain {Captain John Mclntyre) stated that at 6.30 a.m. tho vessel stood into the heads. The ship entered tho Rip at the Inst quarter ebb and, apart from the usual choppy sea experienced in tho Rip, tho sea wa;i apparently calm. Suddenly a 25ft. wave reared up astern and engulfed the vessel, which pooped and swung on her beam ends. Several other vessels have reported a most unusual and confused northwesterly swell out in the Bass Strait. The Weather Bureau stated that the trouble may haves been caused by a marine disturbance well out to sea. This might have resulted in the formation of a huge wave which swept back through the heads. Mr. John Coward, who received serious > spinal injuries, said he was on his way to visit his 89-year-old mother, who is ill in a private hospital at Malvern. He was talking to the Parsons family when the disaster occurred. He had just been chaffing them on the fineness of the weather during the trip and their freedom from seasickness, when he looked over the stern and saw a huge wave approaching. "Hullo," he cried, "here comes a beauty." Wave Engulfs Ship The next instant tho wave had engulfed the ship. Mr. Parsons was swept over tho starboard rail before Mr. Coward's eyes, and disappeared. Mr. Coward himself was thrown against a stanchion, but did not lose consciousness, and saw Mrs. and Miss Parsons clinging together, swept astern by the receding water, as the stricken ship righted herself. "I was lost in a sea of waters," ho added, "and was: sure we had gone under and I was at the bottom. It seemed hours, but slowly she came back, and a few minutes later I was picked up and carried to tho cabin. It was a wonder the ship was not lost." A deck hand who was on duty in the stern of the ship said that when tho wave struck, it took complete control. Nothing could have steered the ship in the face of such an onslaught. She took control and slid with the trough of the wave, and buried; her starboard rail in the water until it reached the lifeboats on the promenade deck. Smashing Crockery "I said to myself this is the finish," he added. "When she seemed to shake herself and came back there was a roar of smashing crockery downstairs, and men were screaming with pain in the passagewav. 1 joined in the rush to rescue them, and in 10 minutes it was all over." Mr. J. Duncan, tireman, of Richmond (Victoria), was asleep in his bunk when the wave struck, the Nairana. He was hurled from the top bunk to the cabm floor and fractured his wrist in the Miss Gwen Chamley, who had been to Tasmania on a visit to her nance, Clifford French, one of the injured, was in her cabin when the wave struck the ship. She looked out of the porthole and saw a man partly overboard and hanging to the railing. She screamed, "Help- that man, or he will be drowned," and did not discover until the ship anchored at Queensclifl that it was Mr. French who had been in peril. Ho had joined the ship at the eleventh hour i:ti order to accompany her home. Mr. French, interviewed at the hospital, said he was standing near the rail on the starboard side waiting for Miss Chamley to come to breakfast. He was chatting to Mr. Gillow when the ship seemed to turn over. For a minute he was tossed about in a sea of swirling water. He was crashed against the rail and was almost overboard when the ship got back on her keel.