HURRICANE TOLL

Wairarapa Age, 26 October 1926, Page 5

HURRICANE TOLL

SHIPWRECKS AND LOSS OF LIFE * AT BERMUDA. BRITISH SLOOP TURNS TURTLE. CASTAWAYS PICKED UP. (Received Monday, 8.15 p.m.) HAMILTON (Bermuda) October 24. The loss of the British sloop-of war, Valerian, and the British freighter Eastway, with a total of a hundred lives, damage to many buildings, and an unprecedented, loss of harbour shipping, is the toll of the hurricane which swept Bermuda on Friday morning. It is believed that eighty of the crew on the Valerian were lost. Nineteen survivors were picked up by H.M.S. Capetown from a raft on which they had been afloat for twentyfour hours.

According to one seaman, the Valerian turned turtle. Captain Osher, the commander, and one officer were saved. The ship sank at one o’clock on Friday afternoon when returning to the Bahamas, whence she had sailed to carry succour to the hurricane-striek-en victims of a month ago. The cruiser Curlew, also returning to the West Indies, answered the Valerian’s call for help, but failed to locate her. During the storm, the cruiser Calcutta broke from her- moorings and was secured with great difficulty by the Wisteria. The schooner Luciline picked up the third officer and eleven of the Eastway’s erew. After the steamer foundered, they were drifting en the sea aS the mercy of the storm.—(A. and N.Z.). SURVIVORS FROM WAR SLOOP. LONDON, October 24. The Admiralty announces that twenty survivors of the crew of the sloop Valerian, sunk in a hurricane off Bermuda on October 22, have been rescued.—(A. and N.Z.)