GIGANTIC TORCH AT SEA

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21560, 24 January 1940, Page 8

GIGANTIC TORCH AT SEA

End Of Italian Liner Search For Survivors United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright (Received January 23, 6.30 p.m.) GENOA, January 22. The owners of the Italian liner Orazio, which caught fire 100 miles from Barcelona, announced that all the 417 passengers were saved, and only a few engine-room hands were missing. Tugs are towing the Orazio to Genoa, still blazing. Survivors who have landed state that an explosion in the engine-room set fire to the ship while she was fighting through a Mediterranean storm. Many of the passengers and crew threw themselves into the sea, and many of those rescued are badly burned. All are suffering from exposure. An officer of the Orazio said the fire burned all night, and spread so rapidly in the gale that some lifeboats were burnt. The Orazio carried a crew of 218. It is now officially stated from Rome that 82 are still missing from the Orazio. Hope is almost abandoned in view of the stormy seas. Twelve Italian seaplanes, five liners, two French warships, and one minesweeper co-operated in the rescue of the passengers and crew from the Orazio which is now reported to have been abandoned. She is drifting on fire from stem to stem in the storn swept Mediterranean. A seaplane flying over the ship reported that she was a gigantic torch, oil from the bunkers feeding the flames. The mainmast has fallen overboard and a lefty pillar of flames is shooting up from the poop. The owners latest statement says the ship carried 417 passengers and 218 of a crew. Five engineers are believed to have been killed by an explosion* in the engineroom. Three crowded lifeboats were swept away and lost in the darkness.

The Paris correspondent of the “Daily Mail” says that French warships and Italian and French seaplanes were still searching at midnight for lifeboats containing many women and children. French circles in London revealed that a French auxiliary cruiser stopped the Orazio before the fire and took off eight Germans. Later she received an SOS and played a prominent part in the rescue.