HOPES FADING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23044, 21 November 1936, Page 15

HOPES FADING

THE MISSING LAUNCH VIKING ANOTHER TASMAN TRAGEDY (From Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY, Nov. 13. Hopes are fading, and have been practically abandoned, for the safety of the six men aboard the 32-foot motor cruiser Viking, which left here on November 1 on what was to be a five days’ journey to Lord Howe Island. It is feared that fire occurred among the surplus stock of petrol which the Viking carried on deck. In any event, the Viking carried supplies of water and food for only 10 days, and these must be now exhausted. At the best, the Viking is drifting with her human freight somewhere in a wide area of sea which has been combed by a destroyer arid in which search is being continued by a fleet of small boats. This tragedy—for tragedy it now seems to be—was the second within a few weeks, Brian Abbot and Leslie Hay Simpson having been definitely given up for lost as a result of their failure to arrive anywhere in their 16-foot launch Mystery Star on a voyage from Lord Howe. Island. * When the Viking set out from Sydney little fear was entertained by friends of the men aboard. The owner-skipper, Mr Grover C. Wilson, owner of a Lord Howe boarding house, was an experienced ocean boatman, and had made several journeys in small craft between Sydney and Lord Howe Island. The Viking was a new craft, of proved seaworthiness. Every precaution for safety had been taken. It seemed that Mr Wilson, his son, and four Sydney men accompanying him were beginning a brief trip which would bring to them, as sea lovers, only the pleasure of an ocean voyage. Their failure to reach their destination or to return to the mainland has emphasised the frailty of their expectations. Unless the Viking is making her way slowly back to the Australian coast, the chance of rescue is small. For several days the destroyer Vendetta has been searching for ther Viking, and has gone in her search to a limit beyond which the missing launch could not have travelled. The Vendetta is now combing thf sea between Sydney and the island, and is expected to return to port this evening. Steamers travelling along the Australian coast and anywhere within the area of the Tasmar. in which the Viking might be havf kept an equally fruitless look-out The sail which the Viking carriet was too small for use in lacking against the wind, and the only fainhope is that it is being employed t< bring the Viking, with the prevail ing winds, slowly to the Australian coast.