1500 STRANDED

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17175, 4 February 1930, Page 11

1500 STRANDED

TOURIST SHIP LOST MILLIONAIRES AND CONVICTS BUENOS AIRES, Jan. 25. Stranded on a remote island, which is used as a penal settlement for the most notorious criminals in .South America, are l." 00. passengers and crew of the Hamburg-America Line tourist ship Monte Cervantes (18j918 tons), which struck a reef in Bougie Channel, Tiorrn del Fnbgo", on Wednesday.

Among them are f}o millionaires. The master, Captain Dl'eyer, also got ashore but insisted on returning and went to his doom when the ship broke in halves. He was the only one Who perished. There is still some apprehension for the comfort of the passengers and crow, who were put ashore by the Argentine war transport Vincente Fidel Lopez, near Ushaia, which is the headquarters of the Government in the Argentine section of the islands.

The Argentine Government never demands the death sentence. Tho worst malefactors, instead, are sentenced to a lite in the bleak country on tho tip of the continent. Cong-disused structures of an old mission station and a few stores and residences arc practically the only buildings at Ushaia affording aceomuiodnlion for so many as abandoned the Monte Cervantes.

The Monte Barmiento, a sister ship of the Monte Cervantes, was ordered by the owners of the vessel to discharge her passengers at Monte Video and proceed immediately to Ushaiu to pick up the stranded tourists. Of the IfiOO aboard not a single person was injured in the transfer to the shore. „ •.

The master, however, on Thursday mournfully returned to his ship. Subsequently a storm arose, and everyone else left quickly. Captain Dreyer, however, insisted on remaining aboard. He was last seen, a gaunt figure, pacing the bridge. Then the steamer's back broke in halves and, slipping into deep water, she disappeared under thundering seas. A fortnight may elapse before the holiday passengers are taken from their island refuge.