SUFFERING AND DEATH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21266, 21 February 1931, Page 13

SUFFERING AND DEATH

DRAMA ON LONELY ISLAND. SURVIVORS REACH FRANCE. (United Press Association.) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) LONDON, February 19. (Received Feb. 20, at 10 pan.) The Daily Mail’s Paris correspondent reports that a drama of suffering and death was revealed by the return to France of three survivors of a party of six men and a woman who were left on the lonely volcanic island of St. Paul, south of the Capctown-Fremantle trade route.

A French company in 1928 organised the lobster tinning industry on the island and took out men from Brittany. After an earthquake and a fire these men decided to abandon the enterprise. The Bretons were repatriated, excepting Madame Brunon, her husband, and five other men who volunteered to remain and guard the machinery. The party suffered terrible hardships owing to the relief ship being held up by storms. A baby born to Madame Brunon lived only a few days. Disease broke out, and some of the men went mad. A negro dragged himself from his hut to an isolated rock to die, and hia flesh was eaten by birds. Brunon died in his wife’s arms, and another man was found dead. Another man, Pierre Quillivic, dressed himself in a Breton costume, put to sea in a canoe, and was not seen again.