A GREAT CAPTAIN DEPARTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23079, 4 January 1937, Page 16

A GREAT CAPTAIN DEPARTS

SIR E. BRITTEN BURIED AT SEA

A solitary woman paced the deck of the tender that put to sea here today in half a gale of wind and rain for the funeral of Sir Edgar Britten, commander of the Queen Mary (wrote the Sunday Express representative from Southampton recently). She was Miss Mary Britten, Sir Edgar's daughter. Lady Britten waited in an hotel. Miss Britten, her eyes red-nmmed with weeping, and clutching her black cloth hat, battled against the wind, and took her mother's place on board the tu£. A member of the funeral party said: “ Miss Britten refused to go below, and shelter from the terrible weather. She paced backward and forward past the coffin on the afterdeck. “It was not until the last moment that she showed any signs of the grief she was suffering. “As the bearers slid the coffin along the planking into the sea Miss Britten burst into tears and sobbed: ‘Goodbye, daddy, darling.’ “ One of us then placed a wreath of chrysanthemums, woven into the design of a ship’s anchor, in her arms. It stood as high as herself. “ She threw it on to the waves. She was on the point of collapse.” The tug was escorted on its four hour and a-half voyage by the 17,000ton Uner Aurania, which Sir Edgar once commanded, and now outward bound for Canada.