ALONE ON WRECK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 216, 11 September 1940, Page 15

ALONE ON WRECK.

FOR FORTY DAYS

CURIOUS EXPERIENCE. (By Air.) SYDNEY, Sept. 7. Mr. Peter Kamp, chief officer of the American freighter Admiral Wiley, which was wrecked on a reef in the Trobiand Group, to the north of New Guinea, and later sold in Sydney as a wreck, had a curious experience when he lived alone on the wreck for 40 days while she continued to be pounded by the sea and creaked and jrroaned alarmingly. Under international law somebody had to stay on the wreck, otherwise anybody could have claimed her, and he was chosen for the job. He has now arrived in Sydney.

" He said the sliip was GOO yards off an island about five miles long and two miles across, but although he could see the people on the island and longed to go ashore, he could not. For the first few days he received an occasional visit from the only white man on the island, but after, that he was left entirely by himself except for a native boy, who carne out in a canoe and agreed to act as his servant. Food supplies went rotten and he had to live on coffee and tinned foods. He liad~""nothing to do but read and walk around the decks for exercise and as the ship's radio had been damaged he got no news. He did not know until he reached Rabaul of the collapse of France and the. declaration of war Jjy Italy.