HARDY SURVIVOR
OLD SAILING SHIP SUNK BY GUNFIRE PA WELLINGTON, MarV23. The 60-year-old hulk Occident proved herself a hardy survivor of the sailing ship days in Palliser Bay today. For almost two hours the target of the New Zealand naval squadron, she resisted the onslaught of tons of modern armour-piercing and high-ex-plosive shells. Twenty-seven direct hits, 23 of them with high explosive, were scored on the old vessel before she sank Fifty-four salvoes from the cruiser Bellona 2000 yards to windward heaved vari-coloured geysers of watet and shell smoke around the old ship. Thirty-two of them were direct straddles, which drenched her sunbleached decks and rusty sides with water and riddled her with shell splinters. Modern gunsights and the magic eye of radar probed at her every second as the former barque tossed helplessly. She was finally put to rest 100 fathoms down in Cook Strait some 15 miles south of Cape Turakirae.
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Bibliographic details
Otago Daily Times, Issue 27038, 24 March 1949, Page 2
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153HARDY SURVIVOR Otago Daily Times, Issue 27038, 24 March 1949, Page 2
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