LIGHTSHIP SUNK.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20331, 14 June 1934, Page 14

LIGHTSHIP SUNK.

Struck by Olympic During Fog. SEVEN LIVES LOST. (By NEGLEY PARSONS.) ABOARD OLYMPIC, May 15. The sea seldom has witnessed a more incredible piece of bad luck than when the White Star liner Olympic sunk the Nantucket lightship. After feeling, then speeding her way through patches ol fog and clear weather 2960 miles across the Atlantic, the 47,000-ton Olympic hi* a target less than 200 ft wide. The Nantucket lightship, freshly loaded with oil, bound down fore and aft by her anchors, was struck amidships, cut clean in half, and sank immediately. Uf her crew of eleven, only four were saved; four must have been carried down with the ship, two were dead when picked up, and one died aboard the Olympic after an hour’s artificial respiration failed to revive him. “Good Lord, There She Is.” The Nantucket’s siren -was heard according to some witnesses, anywhere from one to two minutes before she emerged from the fog almost under the Olympic’s side. Whether a trick of the fog made the sound come from the wrong direction it was impossible to trace. Ore of the ship’s officers was calmly explaining to a passenger the difference between a compressed air siren, such as is carried on the Nantucket, and a steam siren, on the Olympic, when, going to the rail, he suddenly cried, “Good Lord, there she is, dead ahead!” The collision was so immediate after the Nantucket was sighted that there was no tine /or excitement aboard the Olympic so far as the passengers were concerned. Their first alarm was the sudden reversing of the engines and the throbbing of the great ship, as well as the sinister closing of all bulkhead doors, which are controlled from the bridge. By the time the passengers had rushed from the library and the smoking room to the side rails, the Nantucket was already down. First impressions were aothing but the rank smell of oil and to’ acrid smell from the acetylene flares of the lightbuoys which bad been thrown aver. The Olympic had reduced her speed so quickly that she had come almost to a full stop in the midst of a few drifts of flaming wreckage. Peering down through fog from a 19ft high rail, passengers saw oil-streaked seas, a smashed red dory, a bundle ol oars, and a lightbuoy marked “U.S. Lightship Nantucket.” This was thd first object to tell them what the Olympic had hit. Four human figures in the water were visible from the ship’s rail. All wore lifebelts. One sailor, almost touching the side of the Olympic, clutching a section of floating hatch-cover, was so dazed that he was unable to seize the lifeline that bad been thrown from the Olympic’s boat deck. About 50 yards out, in a white morkey suit, bobbed another figure, floating face downward in the water, obviously dead. On the extreme edge of visibility, another figure was waving its arms frantically, trying to attract the attention of the big ship. The Olympic got over two lifeboats with amazing skill and speed. Before hea momentum carried her on, the passengers saw two men hauled alive into a lifeboat. The Olympic slid on into the fug and the lifeboats were lost to sight. Shark Among Wreckage. After this there was a 45-minute suspense as the Olympic rolled in a glassy sea, continuously sounding her sirfen in order to show the searching lifeboats her whereabouts. A motor lifeboat was launched. During this interval, a shark suddenly appeared with a white pilot fish attached to its side. Slowly nosing ita way about among the wreckage, it way sucked along in the Olympic’s wake. After three-quarters of an hour, at 12 o’clock, the port lifeboat appeared from the fog. As she dreaw near the steamship’s side it was seen that she ;ontained six members of the Nantucket’s ?rew, but two of these were obviously lead, lying draped and face downward across the thwarts. One was a negro. Both, when carried aboard, showed gashes received in the collision which ha< probably killed them, as well as the foui members of the crew who were nol found. Sitting uprifht in the bow of the lifeboat was a stocky, bald-headed figure in civilian clothes, bleeding profusely from gashes in his hip. He was Captain Braithwaite of the Nantucket, who became unconscious as he was being lifted over the liner’s rail. The starboard lifeboat appeared within a few minutes, carrying another unconscious figure, who died shortly aftei reaching the Olympic. The four survivors wrapped in hot blankets in the first-clas* cabins of the Olympic, were all badlj suffering from shock. Lightship Skipper’s story. Captain Braith waite, rugged, oldschool type of American seaman, 7( years old, despite shock and a badlj gashed head, was smoking a cigarette when this reporter saw him. Ho had not yet been told that only four of th# Nantucket’s crew were alive. Thinking that all were saved, he said: “It’s a miracle, a miracle. It all happened so quickly there’s hardly anything to tell about it. I had been up all night, as two steamships had come too close to us. At 11, I was below decks, reading a novel, when one ol the crew rushed down and yelled, ‘The Olympic is on top of us.’ I rushed on deck to see her bows almost overhead I just had time to notice that she put her helm hard aport to miss us, when she struck us amidships. Then I got this crack on the head and knew nothing more until I was picked up.” The first mate and wireless operator, both young men, were badly shocked, yet able to talk. Both said it was. over in less than half a minute from the time they saw the Olympic until they were in the water. One of the most tragic figures of this catastrophe is Captain Binks, one ol the best skippers of the White Star Line. He is due to retire in six months, after 23 years’ service without a major accident. A trick of the fog, making him think he was clearing the Nantucket lightship, has probably ruined his career at the very end of it.

Captain Binks was haunted by fog all the way across the Atlantic. Coming out of Southampton, the fog set in so heavily that the Olympic did only 280 miles her first day instead of her usual 550.—(N.A.N.A.)