THEORY OF BUCKLED DECK

Southland Times, Issue 23649, 26 October 1938, Page 5

THEORY OF BUCKLED DECK

DISAPPEARANCE OF VESSEL ANGLO-AUSTRALIAN

LONDON, October 24.

The court of inquiry into the disappearance of the steamer Anglo-Austra-lian ruled out the theories that she had struck a mine or that there was a boiler explosion or a collision. It expressed the opinion that the shelter deck had buckled and that subsequently there had been a complete fracture from deck to keel.

The British tramp steamer Anglo-Austra-lian (5456 tons), built at Sunderland in 1927 for the Nitrate Producers’ Steamship Company (Lawther, Latta and Company), left Cardiff on March 8 for Vancouver, and was reported to have passed the Azoris on March 14. Since then no news has been received of her. The Anglo-Australian was on her way to load lumber at Vancouver for Australia. She had 38 men on board. "We are of the opinion that she must have struck a waterspout or a floating mine, possibly from the Spanish coast,” a representative of the owners said to a reporter in London recently. "She was a magnificent ship, in perfect trim. It is impossible that she was lost as a result of any ordinary cause. It must have been terribly sudden. "Her master, Captain Parslow, was a magnificent seaman. He was a son of the Captain Parslow who saved the AngloCalifornian, with its cargo of horses, early in the war. The last shell from a German submarine killed him, just before the gallant fight put up by the Anglo-Californian’s crew forced the U-boat, to submerge.”