LOOTED BY PIRATES

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17953, 3 December 1932, Page 5

LOOTED BY PIRATES

OFFICERS KEPT IN CABINS PASSENGERS LEAF INTO SEA HONGKONG. October 14. Two passengers of the British steamet Heliknn. which was seized and looted by (Chinese pirates, have been detained by tim Hongkong police on suspicion of luein"- leaders ol the piracy. It "is thought that after they had pillaged the ship some of the pirates may, with typical bravado, have resumed the role of passengers. The Ilelikon was on her way Lorn Hongkong to Saigon, with. 300 passengers on board, when, without v.ai- 1 ,- ing” a band of armed ruffians who had, posed as innocent passengers suddenly made a determined rush for the bridge. Using the butts of their revolvers freely they crushed the resistance offered bv the ship’s officers, put the wireless out of action, and confined the officers and the women passengers in cabins. The ship was then taken into Honghai Bay. near tho notorious pirate nest of Bias Bay. where the pirates proceeded methodically to ransack it. SHIR DISGUISED Although they had disguised the ship by repainting its tunnels, the pirates had a moment "f panic when they saw a vessel, which they thought was a warship, coming up astern. The captured officers were threatened with instant death should the oncoming ship attempt to investigate, but fortunately for them it passed on its way without a hail. Among the passengers were a If nail ian woman, Miss Van Driest, and an American woman. Miss Edith Boynton. They were both- kept prisoners m their cabins, but were treated gallantly by the pirates, who returned them then jewellery which they laid stolen. Other" passenger.;", however, did not fare so well. Two of them, Chinese, preferred death to the horrors and tortures of kidnapping, and committed suicide lay leaping overboard. Thero was a poignant iat-cwell sconebetween one of them, a well-to-do merchant, ami his nine-year-old daughter, before he flung himself into the water. As it was, five Chinese passengers were kidnapped by the pirates, who are holding them to ransom.