MUTINOUS CREW

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23707, 14 January 1939, Page 13

MUTINOUS CREW

TREASURE SHIP TERRORISED CAPTAIN’S AMAZING STORY EVIDENCE BEFORE JURY (United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) HOLLYWOOD, Jan, 12. An amazing story of mutiny and violence during a South Sea treasure hunt is being unfolded before a Federal grand jury. The principal witness is Captain Robert Hoffman, of the schooner Metha Nelson. The vessel left San Pedro in September with a crew of amateurs, and sailed to Cocos Island, where treasure was supposed to be buried. Countess Dorothy di Frasso, a wellknown member of the film colony, and Marino Bello, stepfather of the late Jean Harlow, were among the treasure seekers, After weeks of fruitless digging, all lost heir tempers. Hoffman said that the Metha Nelson became a “real hell ship.'* Drunk for three days, the boatswain, Rolf Barrman, terrorised the ship with a gun. Plied with gin and incited by two of the “ guests,” the crew defied the captain’s authority. “I knocked some discipline into them, and I shackled some to stanchions,” declared Hoffman, who added that the Countess di Frasso asked him to shoot Charles Segal, one of the ringleaders, because she feared he was planning to seize the ship and hold her to ransom. Hoffman revealed that he married Bello to Evelyn Husby, the ship’s nurse, >a few days after the voyage began. Finally, the schooner, with its mutinous crew, was towed back to port.