TRIESTE HARBOUR CUT OPEN.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLII, Issue 11501, 2 April 1918, Page 7

TRIESTE HARBOUR CUT OPEN.

GREAT WASRHIPS SUNK. Like a sunbeam-rift through the mephitic vapours of Vesuvius shines through the fog of war such a heed as that which a handful of Italians have done in the enemy’s gateway of Trieste Harbour. It was a glorious deed in a naughty world. Booms aud nets and mines guarded the inner harbour of Trieste, where the battleship Wien lay moored to her buoy, witli her sister, the Monarch,' ,slumbering alongside of her. The Wien now lies in the depths of the Vallone di Muggia in Trieste Harbour, on a clean, sandy bottom, in about eleven fathoms of turquoiseMuo water. 'When lisr destroyers left her sinking her sister, the Monarch, was still afloat, hut preeariously, for she, also, hsd "been torpedoed. It was no time then to wait anti fi-e whfther the Monarch also went under, as iV;? story told by Mr Perceval Gibbons shows. TWO SMALL BOATS AGAINST AN ARVADA.

► Lieut. Rizzo and the crews "of his two launches—craft not much i , bigger than a slap’s lifeboat—are % the men who put her .there. Lieut. . Rizzo is thirty years of age, a r Sicilian,..with the strong, masculine * good looks of his race. In charge of his second load was a tough lirev eater of sixty-two years. I Such was the Austrian system of combined nets and mines, with the r great warships within that Rizzo’s ‘ chances were groat, at the best, of being blown to pieces. - On the night of the 9th, when the p two little boats set out, there was mist on the sea. It was past midr night when they crawled in towards the comt where lies the white cit.y of Trieste, cascading in snow ter- ’ races down its radiant hillside to ? the years and docks of its port. The f two boats crawled in towards the t liarbour mouth. LANDING IN TEETH OP ENEMY In Trieste Harbour three piers jut seaward—making thus two channels, one to either hand of the central pier, which nas also a breakwater. Th-se channels were closed by booms and nets,, with their mines, all linked to the piers by tlse great steel hawsers. The boats glided alongside one pier, and Rizzo climbed up its concrete side and roconuoitered the situation.- There was nobody on that pier. On tha middle pier, however, was the guard-room; there 'could be hoard a confusion of voices and the barking of a dog, and from the railway station ashore, the noise I of an engine screaming vociferously. Between while the slap-slap of the feet of a sentry patrolling the middle pier. HOW THE DEFENCES WERE CUT OUT. Lieut. Kizzo crawled back and gave tit© order, and up came his men, crawling on hands and knees over the concrete,, passing big cutting tools from ham! to-baud. Groping their way to the 1 cables, somelsofc Mo work to cut them,, while two l uien scouted inshore least some- sentry should arrive. If that sentry had come, ‘with those big wot sailors lying armedbehind the mooring bollards ami waiting to silence him, that sentry's chance of life would have been of the slightest. HARBOUR OPEN. At last came the moment when the weight of the net and its attachments tore the last remaining steel strands asunder. The whole great cobweb of metal and explosives sank. The liar hour lay open. Rizzo and his men crawled hack to tln-ir boats, and those buns uiovjj ed like shadows into the Yallone of | Muggia, where the Wien and the | Monarch lay nosing their buoys. | Nearest lay the Wien; the Monarch 1 slumbered two hundred yards be- | yond her. I “ Kizzo edged into investigate, and | then backed off till bo had his | enemy at a hundred and fitly yards. | His second boat, under the old | petty officer, shifted out upon his beam to get A lino which cleared the Wini’s bow and connnamLd the Monarch’s great steel flank. Kizzo raised bis arm in that gloom, and saw the answering gesture of the old potty officer. DEATH BLOW. In a second four long steel devil were sliding through the water fos the enemy. A roar—a “blast of flame—a waterspout raining on to them—and a second roar, as the Monarch, too, got her dose. A searchlight flashed out from the Wien and saved at the darkness. An agitated scream sounded over the water, “Wer daV” (Who goes there?) There were shoutings and stampings along the deck of the wounded ship; searchlights waking along the shore and on the breakwaters and anti-aircraft guns arousing everywhere. None in Trieste knew whenca the attack had come—whether from air or sea. The sky was festooned with bursting shrapnel, while ships in tiie harbour opened with their guns towards the harbour mouth, shelling the misty Adriatic at random. ESCAPE UNDER RAIN OF FIRE. By the light of the furious illumination the Italian sailors saw the great bulk of the Wein listing towards them. By this time they wore making for the harbour mouth. Shells spouted around j them, but none iut them; and i both boats saw the last 1 * shudder of tiie dying warship Wein. i The Wein was one of throe ships | launched in 1895. Her sisters were | the Monarch and the Budapest. | She carried four-. lOin and six-6in \ guns, and a crew of 41 officers and I men. So far as is known, she car- j ried them at last to the bottom. I