MISSING STEAMER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23040, 18 May 1938, Page 14

MISSING STEAMER

HATCH COVERS SEEN POSSIBLE CLUE TO FATE LONDON, May 16 A possible clue to the fate of the British tramp steamer Anglo Australian—a vessel of 5456 tons, built at Sunderland in 1927 for the Nitrate Producers' Steamship Company {Lawther, Latta and Company.)—is reported. She left Cardiff on March 8 for Vancouver, and was reported to have passed the Azores on March 14, since when no news had been received. Captain Dalhanna to-day radioed from Cristobal that he had passed two hatch covers, on which the words "Anglo-Australian" were burned, 23 miles north-east of Cristobal, Sir John Latta, chairman of the firm of Lawther, Latta and Company, owners of the ship, said the message was puzzling, as it is not the custom of the company to burn the names of yessels on hatch covers. Apparently the ship was destroyed by fin explosion. The Anglo Australian was on her way' to load lumber at Vancouver for Australia. She had 38 men on board. "We are of opinion that she must have struck a waterspout or a floating mine,^possibly from trie Spanish coast,'" a representative of the owners said to a reporter in London recently. "She was a magnificent ship, in perfect trim," he added. "It is impossible that ehe was lost as a result of any ordinary cause. It must have been terribly •udden.

"Her' master, Captain Parslow, was a magnificent seaman. He,was a son of the Captain Parslow who saved the Anglo Californian, with its cargo of horses, early in the war. The last shell from a German submarine killed him, just before the gallant fight put up by tho Anglo Californian's crew forced tho .U-boat to submerge."