AWFUL ORDEAL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22628, 16 January 1937, Page 2 (Supplement)

AWFUL ORDEAL

BOY SOLE SURVIVOR 39 SHIPMATES PERISH "THEIR CRIES HAUNT ME" Picked up by tho German Bed Star liner Westerniand, a cabin boy, Fritz Boethke, aged 17, of Berlin, was tho sole survivor of the Hamburg-American motor-ship Isis, <1454 tons, which was lost recently, 200 miles off Land's End while the Queen Mary, answering the 5.0.5., altered her course and raced to the spot. Lying in the Westernland's hospital, the boy, who owes his life to the ship's doctor's ceaseless efforts, told of his nightmare 14 hours' ordeal, half-frozen, half-senseless, in a broken lifeboat, pitched about by heavy seas.

He seemed hardly to realise he was alive. He had left America a fresh-faced, happy youngster on his third sea trip; now he was telling in a fiat, toneless voice of the storm freak that saved him tfhile it swept his 39 shipmates to death.

Grim Relics The Isis carried a crew of 19 and 21 passengers, and when the Queen Mary arrived on the scene, after steaming at full speed through tremendous seas, an empty lifeboat and other debris were all that remained to toll of the disaster. Lying back on a pillow, Roethke, a brawny youth, pale, thick-set, with long brown hair, told how the Isis ran into "terrible weather."

Passengers and crew, he said, were all mustered on the boat deck with No. 1 hatch stove in and the fore part full of water. "The boat-deck was about a foot above water," he went on, "and the captain ordered Xo. 2 boat to be lowered. Sonic shipmates and I went into the boat, when suddenly it was smashed bv a heavy breaker.

"I found myself in the water, and saw an upturned boat. A shipmate was swimming beside me, and together we swam for the boat. As wc reached it a wave righted it, and we got in. Another wave flung us back into the sea. Battered Against Ship's Side

"I climbed back and wedged my belt under one of the seats against the side of the boat. I tvas alone; my mate had disappeared. "1 saw the Isis slowly going down, and heard tbe cries of 'Help' gradually fade away.

"The cries of my drowning comrades haunt me—they will always haunt me. I shall never go to sea again." Roethke described how, through the darkness, he saw several times the lights of a ship. He could do nothing but feebly wave his hand to attract attention. The ship ho now knows to be the Westernland Lines were thrown to the boy, but the hero of the rescue is the Westernland's boatswain.

Clinging to the rope ladder, battered against the side as the great ship rolled, he waited while his ship was manoeuvred nearer the little boat. Then, swinging from side to side, lie waited his chance and jumped into the boat to pass a rope round Roethko. Queen Mary Praised

Mr. Douglas Fairbanks, who was a passenger on the Queen Mary as she raced to the lsis. said: "I have never seen anything like this crossing. Von had to watch your step if you tried to move around the ship. Quantities of dishes and crockery were broken, and several people were swept off their feet by the terrific rolling. "Everything movable in the dining saloon was lashed in position, and several of the diners had themselves lashed to their chairs."

The Queen Mary, which lost 15 hours in making her vain rescue dash to the Isis, had to turn round at Southampton in 21 hours instead of her usual 4S hours.

During her short stay armies of men and women worked to make her ready for sea again.

Captain R. V. Peel, her commander, told how the liner had come through the longest spell of stormy weather experienced in the North Atlantic for manv years.

"The Queen Mary is remarkably easy to sail," he added. "She rolled, or course, and one man was badly hurt when he slid across a deck. But she again proved herself wonderfully seaworthy—far and away better than any ahip I have sailed."