COLLISION'S TOLL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23157, 1 October 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

COLLISION'S TOLL

Trawler Loses Seven of Crew ; When Stnuck

FOURTEEN hundred passengers in the London-Midland-Scottish mail-boat Cambria, bound for Kingstown Eire, slept on unaware, until they reached their destination, that the ship had been in collision during dense fog in the Irish Sea with the Heetwood trawler Alcazar, which lost seven of her ten men. , The crash occurred 15 miles from the Eire Coast at about 5 a.m., and the 159-ton trawler, cut almost in half, sank within five minutes.

CAMBRIA, a 3462-ton vessel •which sailed from Holyhead, remained hove-to for more than an hour while her lifeboats searched for the trawler's crew Three men were picked up, including the 43-year-old skipper, Captain Ernest Swain, but there was no trace of the others. Cambria was ■ steaming dead slow when the crash came. She was stopped immediately, lifebelts were thrown overboard, and within a minute four lifeboats had been lowered. The steamer's fore-rudder was damaged in the collision and her stern plates were buckled near the water line. She carried the trawler's survivors to Holyhead on her return trip and later went into dry dock at Liverpool* All of Lowestoft The men who lost their lives were:— R. C. Dawson, aged 53, mate; Edward Harvey, aged 55, engineer; Frederick Finch,' aged 24, second engineer; Frank Barber, bo'sun; Robert Daines, aged 50, deckhand; Charles Barker,, aged 58, deckhand; and Leonard H. Peek, cook. All lived at Lowestoft. Barker leaves a widow and nine children, and Daine3 was a widower with five children. Finch was planning to marry a Lowestoft girl. The trawler's survivors told dramatic stories of the disaster.

Captain . Swan, another Lowestoft man, was below deck when the accident occurred. "I went to bed about 4 a.m. and left the mate in charge. About five o'clock tho whistle woke me, and I knew we were running in fog. A few minutes later I heard the crash," he declared. ' 'I hurried on deck and. saw there was no possible chance of getting our boat out. We all went down with the Alcazar, and when I came to the surface, I swam about—it seemed for nges. It was bitterly cold." Deckhand George Haylock, of South Lowestoft, and the skipper's nephew, Gordon Aldred, 14-year-old apprentice, of Lowestoft, were the other survivors.

Hay lock stated that water poured into the trawler's cabin and washed the men, up. "I was swimming alontr with Mr. Barber, the bo'sun, and managed to support him with a pieco of wood," he went on. " 'Keep it up,' I shouted, but I could' see he was getting exhausted. Ho mada a further effort to hold on, but had& to let go and I did not seo him again I kept going till the lifeboat came and pulled me in." Sound, Asleep Gordon Aldred, who was making his isecond voyage in the Alcazar, wa* !saved by the skipper who pulled him .'from his bunk by his braces, when the ' collision occurred. *.im< Aldred —whose father was lost at sea two years ago —stated that he was sound asleep at the time, and first thought it was a dream. ; "My uncle pulted me through the water that was coming into the cabin, and when we got on deck I saw it was nearly level with the sea," he related.' ' "When the trawler sank we were - all thrown under the water. "I. started swimming, and found an oar. I held on to it. ' "After I had been swimming for about half an hour a boat picked mo up. , # ' 7 ' , "It was God's will I should not .drown, but I'jn not going back to the sea." i ' • ; Two days-before, the Cambria's sister ship, the Hibernia, 3467 tons, had been in a slight collision with a : tramp steamer off Holyhead. Her upper part was damaged but she is still in service. ;