RUM-RUNNER SINKS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 296, 14 December 1931, Page 1

RUM-RUNNER SINKS.

Norwegian Coastguards Shell Vessel. TWO SURVIVORS RESCUED. United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. (Received December 14, 11 a.m.) LONDON, December 13. Brought ashore near Maaloey, Norway, Tarnished and exhausted,, in a boat bearing the corpses of four of their shipmates, the English first officer, Mr W. D. Savage and the German engineer, Herr Erhault, gave news of the fate of their Polish master, Captain Visnagrotsky, and the English and German members of the crew of the rum-run-ning steamer Venus. The ship, which was owned in London and was flying the Panama flag, sank after an encounter with a Norwegian Customs vessel. The police had been searching for the Venus since the coastguard cutter fired twenty shots at her, after she left Lerwick, in the Shetland Islands, with 500 G gallons of liquor on board. The vessel, subsequently, possibly as a result of the gunfire, ran on the rocks near Bergen. The crew got her off, leaking badly, and pumped desperately until she again grounded and foundered in fifteen fathoms. The crew sought safety in two boats and on pieces of floating wreckage. Seven Men Drowned. Captain Visnagrotsky broke his arm when leaving the Venus and was drowned. The first boat capsized, drowning six men. The second boat overturned, but the men on board drifted, clinging to the sides and the bottom until two died from exposure and bitter cold. Mr Savage flew distress signals, which fishermen observed and rescued the survivors, two of whom succumbed after they had been brought ashore. Mr Savage and Herr Erhault are expected to recover. A motor boat has been despatched to seek possible additional survivors. The police caught Captain Visnagrotsky rum-running to northern Norway in 1930, with the schooner Emmanuel, which the authorities confiscated, fining the captain, whom they expelled from Norway for smuggling in 6000 gallons of liquor. The rum-runner Venus was formerly the German trawler Wobke. The captain, while at Lerwick, engaging a local crew, married a Lerwick girl, whose brother is among the missing. Wife’s Story. The wife of Walter Denis Savage, the surviving first officer of the Venus, has not received official intimation of the disaster. Interviewed at her Thamesside house in the heart ©£ dockland, she stated that she had been unable to eat or sleep owing to the shock. She expressed thankfulness at the safety of her husband, whom she expected home at Christmas. “ This is his third shipwreck in six years,” she said. “ The first was between Antwerp and London, and the second in a collision which sank a Continental freighter in the river Scheldt, which resulted in his being laid up for two months with pleurisy, without compensation. It cannot go on. He must leave the sea. He would not have shipped this time, but he had been out of work for nine months and hated drawing the dole. I do not understand this rum-running story.” Both Mr and Mrs Savage come of seafaring stock. The wife has an uncle, who is a lieutenant-commander in the navy, and two uncles, a brother-in-law and six nephews, who are master mariners. Her husband enlisted in the 2nd Suffolks at the age of sixteen and was wounded in Flanders.

SAVAGE UNDER ARREST.

Vessel Believed to Have Struck Rocks.

(Received December 14, 12.20 p.m.) LONDON, December 13.

An Oslo message states that the sheriff, consequent on a statement by Mr Savage, who is too prostrated to identify his dead shipmates, has arrested him.

A British consular agent will attend the inquest on the victims on December 14.

Diving, or salvaging, will ascertain the exact cause of the disaster, which is not believed to be due to the three warning and fifteen direct shots which the coastguard cutter fired at the Venus, but to the striking of two rocks in succession in a terrific gale. Many barrels of liquor are afloat on the scene of the wreck.