AN OCEAN WANDERER.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8158, 12 June 1906, Page 7

AN OCEAN WANDERER.

Early in April the Fourth Cruiser Squadron, consisting of seven vessels, was ordered to (search for and sink the derelict steamer Danmore, which for some ten weeks had been drifting in the direct course of eteairers between Great Britain and America. The Danmore sailed from Cardiff for Newport wi*h a cargo of coal. She met with severe weather, and was abandoned in mid-Atlantio with her engines disabled, and apparently in a sinking condition. By one of the strange vagaries of the sea, however, SHE REMAINED AFLOAT. and was sighted again and again by passing Bteamers. The derelict, a battered-looking wreck, was, of course, a very serious danger to navigation. Daring the day passing ▼easels could see and avoid the danger, but during the night the abandoned Dunmore might have proved the dduse of A DREADFUL DISASTER. The cruisers intended to use the. vessel as a target for praotioe with the heavy guns, and no doubt the ill-fated Dunmore has now been under the waves for some weeks. The use of the Cruiser Squadron to dispose of a dangerous dereliot recalls the experience of the United States oruiser Atalanta, about ten years ago, when she was sent out to search for a dereliot off the ooast of Maine. The Atalanta; found the deroliot IN A WATERLOuGED CONDITION, and about two hundred miles from port, and it was deoided to sink her. Three Whitehead torpedoes were fired into the hulk, but the missile", which should have been sufficient to sink an ironclad, produoed no effeot at all. Then the Atalanta reversed her engines, withdrew half a mile, and oame on at full-speed, ALL HANDS LHNG ON THE DECK in response to the order "Prepare to ram." The oruiser struck the derelict amidships with the lamentable result that 14 feet of warship remained embedded in the waterlogged vessel. Fortunately the weather waa calm or the Atalanta would never have reached pore again. The dereliot escaped.