STEAMER SINKS

Southland Times, Issue 21275, 22 December 1930, Page 5

STEAMER SINKS

COLLISION IN FOG 40 PEOPLE MISSING DISASTER OFF DENMARK J. W. H. T. DOUGLAS’S FATE (United Press Assn.—By Telegraph—Copyright.) (Rec. 5.5 p.m.) London, October 20. Tho Finnish steamers Oberon ana Arcturus collided in a fog in the Kattegat between Sweden and Denmark last evening. The Oberon sank in three minutes and between 30 and '4O persons arc missing, including J. W. 11. T. Douglas, the cricketer, and his father, who were returning from Sweden for Christmas after a timber business trip. Several other Britons were believed to be aboard. The Oberon sent out S.O.S. calls and several steamers rushed to the rescue. Tim Oberon’s saved include one Englishman, three English women and 32 of the crew, including the captain and officers. It Is believed that there were no British on board the Arcturus. Both steamers belong to the same line and were engaged in a weekly service between Hull and Finland. The captains of each ship are named Hjolt and are brothers. Sonic of the Oberon’s passengers took to the boats in their night attire; others were drifting in the water in lifebelts. Passengers Trapped Below. A later report states that the captain of the Arcturus reports that he believed he saved all those floating supported by buoys and other objects. The majority of the passengers were trapped below in the darkness when the Oberon listed 80 degrees. The Arcturus, though badly damaged, stood by till noon to-day. The captain of the Danish salvage ship Harm assisted in the rescue work. He says that when the fog cleared in the afternoon all that remained of the Oberon were oil patches, two Christmas trees, which were part of the cargo, and two bodies of women. Neilson, a deck .hand survivor, said he was aroused by a terrific crash at 9.30 p.m. He rushed on deck, by which time the stern was submerged and the sea pouring in through a tremendous breach in the starboard side. The captain ordered out all the lifeboats, which it was impossible to launch owing to the vessel heeling over so rapidly. Screams and cries were heard everywhere as the Oberon turned turtle. The boiler exploded and blazing oil spread over the sea in which many were struggling. Neilson and three shipmates swam to the lifeboats, which were so damaged that they needed all their efforts to keep the boats afloat. The London newspapers universally pay tribute to Douglas as a great sportsman. “The last I saw of Johnny Douglas was when he dashed cut of the smokeroom to tell his father to come on deck as the ship was obviously sinking fast," says Ernest Martin, a British survivor. “We were in the smoke'room'when the crash occurred. J. W. H. T. Douglas had run below apparently to get a lifebelt; then came a terrific lurch. I struggled out, and was immediately thrown into the sea. 1 did not see Douglas again or my wife, who was below." Search for Survivors Abandoned. Martin was picked up by the Arcturus and arrived at Copenhagen with 37 survivors, many of whom are injured, and five bodies of the drowned. The search for survivors was carried on all day, but the efforts of British, Danish, Swedish and Finnish vessels were finally abandoned. Sixteen passengers and 24 of the crew are still missing out of 26 passengers and 63 aboard. Seven of those missing are British and include a father, mother and little daughter. The most tragic figure is the Oberon’s captain, Eric Hjolt, who not only lost his ship but also his wife and four-year-old daughter, who were accompanying him to spend Christmas at Hull. Captain lljolt remained on the bridge till the last, when he picked up his daughter and with his wife leaped into the sea. His wife sank, but Captain Hjolt swam with his daughter and reached the Arcturus, but she had frozen to death in his arms in the icy water.

J. W. H. T. DOUGLAS

LION-HEARTED CRICKETER.

BATTLES AGAINST ODDS.

J. W. H. T. Douglas, the well-known English cricketer, who is believed to have been drowned in the collision between the Oberon and the Arcturus, was born on September 3, 1882. He was educated at Felsted, and while there won the Public Schools boxing championship. He afterwards gained the middleweight amateur boxing championship at the Olympic Games of 1908. He joined the Essex XI. in 1901. A fine defensive batsman and a good fast bowler, he became captain of the team in 1911. Owing to P. F. Warner's illness during the Australian tour of the M.C.C. team of 1911-12, the onerous duties of captaincy devolved upon Douglas, who was also selected to captain the team proceeding to Australia in 1920. During one visit to Australia his solid defensive batting inspired a way to make use of his initials thus: “Johnny Won’t Hit To-day.’’ Douglas served with the forces during the Great War, attaining the rank of Colonel.

“Dogged does it”’was clearly the motto of this lion-hearted cricketer, states a writer in an English paper in referring to Douglas. He had a magnificent confidence in the dowiy of physical strength given to him by nature; it could not, he must have told himself a thousand times, fail him in a crisis—-simply could not, for was it not a noble strength, and had he not a noble faith? Douglas was ever a fighter. For him, one imagines, a game must always be a challenge to a man’s strong right arm. Not for Douglas, plainly, did contest in the honest fresh air ever seem the right place for intellectual fine shades—for your plots and strategems. He had the Englishman’s unspoken impatience of the very thought that cold-blooded Machiavellism might prevail in a game over the giant heart and giant strength of limb. There was the grandeur of primitive warfare in Douglass cricket; he put an elemental force into the game, thrusting his way through it because of his determined heart, his sheer thew and sinew. He was a cricketer who always gave the impression that everything he did was done by dint of tremendous will power. Even as he ran' to the wicket to bowl, you would swear that he was forcing his every step onward by power of mind. For he had never been a man of supple limb; since his young days, even, he had suggested, as Robert Lynd once finely put it, a man in armour. As he reached the bowling crease a convulsion went' on in his body, and out of him came a last burst of energy and temper—and all of that energy and temper went into the ball. When Douglas was at

his finest he seemed, as he hurled the ball at the batsman, to put into it most implacable enmity—it would bounce from the pitch a living, wrathful thing. His batsmanship, too, was the expression of Douglas’s will. He was not born to bat —he compelled himself to bat. And as he bent himself over his blade he was constantly the image of sullen defiance. He knew he had none of your artist-batsman’s fine feathers to spread—no dazzling strokes. Very well then; he would spite the bowlers all the same, spite even nature for withholding from him a punitive bat while she gave to him a punitive heart. He faced the attack with eyes of distrust; and between the bowling of one ball and another he would gnaw at his glove stubbornly. Yet once, in the Test match at Leeds in 1921, Douglas as a batsman assumed the grand stature. The day was going cruelly against England; the gods themselves appeared to be tormenting her. Hobbs was stretched on an operating table at England’s darkest period—five out for 60, and Australia 4071 Tennyson had a crippled hand. In this hopeless prospect Douglas’s spirit was indomitable; fori’hours he put a straight bat to the onslaught of Gregory and Macdonald. That day Tennyson played one of the greatest “rescue’’ innings in the history of cricket, and Douglas was his companion in a forlorn-hope partnership which was most moving to see. In this watchdog innings of Douglas’s he had his thumb driven inwards by Gregory—Mr F. B. Wilson tells the story in his excellent book “Sporting Pie,”- —and when he got back to the pavilion he could hardly get his glove off and the thumb was horrible to look at. No hint all day did Douglas give on the field of the pain scouring him. It is, of course, as a bowler that Douglas will be always discussed in admiring language by cricketers. In his hey-day he was perhaps more deadly than anybody else in England on a good wicket, while the ball was new. Then would he swing in to the batsman one ball, and the next swing out —with no sign to be got from the line of flight of the ultimate direction of the balk His pace from the turf was formidable. Little or no artifice went into his bowling; it did not need artifice with so killing a battle-axe edge and power. But Douglas is not" to be talked of merely as a skilled cricketer; he was too big a man for that. England has had fewer captains so unsubtle as 'he, maybe; she certainly never has known a captain more courageous. Seven times in succession Armstrong overthrew England with Douglas as chief, and at the ffiush Douglas was undaunted. Let no man say Douglas led England to defeat in those dark days; rather must it be proclaimed that Douglas was England’s captain in battles against odds, and that ho became heroic through frustration and won the people’s hearts after all.