CHANNEL SHIP SUNK

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21574, 9 February 1940, Page 7

CHANNEL SHIP SUNK

Was Crack Vessel of Service

Passengers And Crew Safe United press Association— By Electrio Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, February 7. The Munster (4300 tons), the crack ship of the Irish Channel service, was sunk to-day following an explosion. All the passengers and crew were saved. A tramn steamer rescued the majority of the 200 already landed. Twenty were rushed to hospital suffering from shock and minor injuries.

Abie-Seaman Clure said that a terrific explosion occurred. Boiling water and the galley fixtures were flung everywhere.

“My lifeboat became waterlogged and we were all flung into the water,” he said. “I was pulled into a motorboat.” Clure added that Captain Paisley did not want to leave the bridge although he was finally persuaded to enter a boat. The Munster’s distress flares attracted another ship eight miles away, and she co-operated with the tramp steamer in the rescue work. The Munster sank in an hour and a half. The crew declared that the women and children among the passengers all behaved with perfect calm. A sixteen-year-old deckboy found the captain on the bridge with his arm broken in two places. The boy helped him to fit on his lifebelt and persuaded him to leave the ship. Nineteen are believed to be missing from the Estonian cargo vessel Anu (1421 tons), which was mined in the North Sea. Five members of the crew and two women were rescued.

LIGHTSHIPS TO BE PROTECTED

United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, February 7. For the first time in the history of war vessels of the British lightship service are to be protected, according to an announcement made by the First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr Winston Churchill), in the House of Commons to-day. “Lightships have never before been specially protected because they have always been regarded by civilised nations as outside the scope of hostilities and immune from attack, and consequently the lighthouse service has never assisted us in reporting enemy activity,” said Mr Churchill. “In view of several recent savage, anarchic attacks by German aircraft upon lightships round the coast and the murder of some of their crews, special measures will be taken to provide for protection for this service and where possible lightfloats will replace the lightships in outer positions.” M. Pernot, French Minister of Blockade, revealed that since the outbreak of the war Germans destroyed 319 neutral ships of a tonnage of 1,144,957, amounting to 1.6 per cent, of the world tonnage. MINE WRECKS PIER United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, February 7. A German mine exploded and destroyed the middle section of an east coast pier, and wrecked a theatre on the pier.

The whole district was shaken. Windows on the seafront were smashed. Coastguards found a second mine three miles away, an', a third was washed up on a beach on the southeast coast. The police placed a cordon round the town and stopped traffic.

Air Raid Precaution officials on the north-east coast were warned to keep a sharp lookout for toylike meteorological balloons, one of which had been picked up. Some contained radio apparatus to transmit air pressures to receiving stations and ships. The Air Ministry later stated that the balloons were British.