ADRIFT AMONG SHARKS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21542, 14 January 1932, Page 11

ADRIFT AMONG SHARKS

SURVIVORS OF WRECK. Remnants of the crew of the lost schooner Baden-Baden, 11 exhausted starv- | ing men. were recently lifted to the deck of the United States mine-sweeper Swan l in mid-ocean. They were rescued from a ship’s lifeboat in the Caribbean Sea. off the Colombian coast. Five men were dead at the bottom of the boat. For three days the Swan had been searching for the lifeboat after it had been sighted by the pilot of an aeroplane carrying mails from South America to Panama. While flying over the tumbling seas, the pilot looked down upon stormy waters strewn with hundreds of floating oil-drums, in the midst of which was the boat containing men, who waved their shirts frantically at him. On a hatch-cover were a man and a woman, and on one drum was a nude man, whom the waves washed into the sea. The pilot swooped down to within 12 feet of the waves and plainly saw the fins of sharks cleaving the waters. It was, however, impossible for him to attempt a rescue. Mr Harold S. Power, a London banker, who was a passenger in the aeroplane, gave a vivid account of what he saw, “ It was terrible,” he stated, “ to think that although we were only a few feet from the ship’s survivors, we could do nothing to help them. We circled the lifeboat three times. Heavy seas washed many of those in the boat overboard, but their companions pulled them in again. We could plainly see the sharks cruising round the wreckage. The woman on the raft appeared to be dead.” The Baden-Baden was formerly Anton Flettner’s motor ship, which attracted considerable attention when he sailed it across the Atlantic five years ago. The vessel left Rio Haca, Colombia ,on November 5 with a general cargo for Colon, Panama Canal zone, and carried two passengers in addition to. the crew. There were heavy gales in the Caribbean on the day after the vessel left port.