THRILLING STORY OF THE SEA.

Waikato Independent, Volume V, Issue 322, 10 January 1907, Page 5

THRILLING STORY OF THE SEA.

GALLANT RESCUE BY BRITISH SAILORS. London, November 3. A thrilling story of the perils of the sea was told at the Receiver of Wrecks’ offices at Liverpool by the officers and crew of the Johnstone liner Vedamore. When she was 215 miles off the Fastnet Rock in the early hours of Thursday last, battling against enormous seas and a north gale, her look-out man saw lights of distress. _ Presently a large steamer came into view, rolling helplessly in the mountainous seas. Captain W. Henry held his vessel up until daylight, when he found that the distressed ship was the steamer Neraea, of the Baltic Line. She was apparently sinking. All her engines were disabled and her bulkheads were carried away. Captain Henry called for volunteers to man the lifeboat. Every member of the crew responded, though the task was a perilous one. The men were picked and the lifeboat launched, but almost at the same moment a boat was lowered from the Nemea.

This boat had been launched by the foreign sailors of the doomed ship, who clambered into her in a panic, leaving their British officers to their fate. By the skilful manoeuvring of his ship, Captain Henry got near to the crowded boat, but so thoroughly had the foreigners lost their heads that he had to threaten them with penalties if they did not calm down and act like men. It was only in this way that he was able to save them. GALLANT IIiiSCUI,. Meanwhile the Yedamore’s men got their lifeboat to the Nemea, and brought off the officers and all the British numbers of the crew. One of these, an Irishman named Shannon, had his leg broken. He was put first into the boat, bub could not be lifted out. He lay at the bottom and remained there until the second rescue trip had been completed, when he was swung on board still in the boat.

Though suffering intense pain his only remark while lying at the bottom of the boat was, “Go ahead, boys. Don’t mind me.” The rescued men numbered twenty-five, but two other men had been washed overboard during the three days on which the Nemea was a adrift. A pathetic episode was that when the Yedamore arrived in the Liverpool docks yesterday the only relatives of the crew who met the ship were sisters of the two men who were drowned. Captain Henry is said to have acted with great gallantry. He comes of an ancient seafaring family of Waterford, and one of his brothers, another seacaptain, holds the Humane medal for leaping over-board in a gale and saving one of his sailors.