SHIPS THAT PASSED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19478, 22 December 1925, Page 12

SHIPS THAT PASSED

A WIRELESS TALE OF THE SEA. HOW THE DOCTORS CALLED. When the mail steamer Avon was two days out from Rio de Janero on her way to Cherbourg, a voice fell from the skies begging for her help. The message vibrating through her aerials had been wirelessed from the steamer Glofeld, below the horizon, and it told a talc of urgency and distress. The captain’s wife was mortally ill, the call ran, and there was no one of sufficient medical skill on board to help her. Could the Avon send her surgeon to her aid? The Avon’s captain could and did. The. wireless message from the Glofeld told him her position and he steamed towards her. But when the two vessels neared one another the heavy seas that were running made the launching of a boat a matter of difficult. Tnc two doctors of the Avon were not to be deterred from their errand of mercy by that, and there was no need to call for volunteers to man the boat, for crew and doctors were alike eager to go. The boat was got off, and though in its passage from ship to ship the waves sometimes hid it, the doctors reached the Glofeld. There, through an anxious hour or more, they examined the patient and performed in that rocking ship an operation which saved the captain’s wife and added one omre to the strange and heroic tales of the sea.