DEVOTION TO DUTY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23489, 28 October 1939, Page 2 (Supplement)

DEVOTION TO DUTY

Highest Traditions of Merchant Navy

rpHE full story of the sinking of the ~~ Manaar off the Portuguese coast by a German submarine in the early hours of September 6 is told in a Ministry of Information bulletin. It discloses the great gallantry of the wireless operator, Mr. J. G. M. Turner, of Buckles Way, Banstead, Surrey. Unaware that the crew had been ordered to abandon ship,. Mr. Turner left the wireless office to report that he was unable to transmit on power. To his surprise he saw the crew already in the boats. Knocked Senseless The chief engineer, Mr. J. Kermode, who was in one of the boats, described how a Lascar seaman came down the rope ladder without his lifebelt. The boat had drifted some distance away and the crew manned the oars to try to pull back, but could not make any headway. The Lascar refused to jump into the water and swim for it. Mr. Turner appeared and was told to jump. He refused to do bo without the Lascar. At this time a heavy explosion took place on the opposite side of the ship. Mr. Turner was hailed to loAver another boat which was hanging in its davits. He did so, but the boat descended into the wat<jr with a run and half-filled. He was in the process of clearing away another boat for lowering when a shell exploded and knocked him senseless. On regaining consciousness he found that the boat and the Lascar, who had been helping to lower it, had been blown to pieces. Finding a second wounded Lascar, who hailed him from another part of the ship, Mr. Turner ■\<-ent down the ladder, jumped into the sea, swam to the first boat, which was almost submerged, and managed to get it alongside the pilot's ladder. He then went hack on board the Manaar,

collected the wounded man, and somehow got him down the laddtr aafiiito the boat. From the combined aceounts ! of the chief officer and the chief engineer, Mr. Turner was next seen by his shipmates drifting toward them in tn« water-logged boat. Ho was taken into one of the other boats, alonj; with the wounded Lascar, whose life he had saved. v J . The-'enemy's submarine _ had been firing, for ten or fifteen minutes. The Mannar was torpedoed twice and eventually sank after breaking in two. Mr. ' Turner. x says the Ministry of ' Information account, "not only showed great devotion to duty by striving to transmit S.O.S. messages by wireless with the ship under fire, but conformed to the highest traditions of .the Merchant Navy in saving the life of a wounded shipmate at the ri-k of his own.' 5 , -- -- '