EXPERIENCES ON THE SEA.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13336, 30 January 1909, Page 9

EXPERIENCES ON THE SEA.

RUSSIAN CAPTAIN'S STORY.

(Received January 29th, 5.40 p.m.) FREMANTLE, 'January 29.

Scenes of savagery were witnessed. A crowd of persons of all descriptions and every age, some naked, others half clothed, nnd nearly all injured, rushed to the Customs. The officials were quite unable to otfer resistance to tho frenzied mob. Suddenly reports of revolvers rang out, and the people wore fighting among themselves for a handful of vegetables or a small piece of bread. From the deck of one of the steamers the sight was terrifying. Another aspect of the disaster is described by a chemist named Pulco, who was in a ferry boat. He. was crossing iv the early morning from Messina to Reggio. Suddenly a gale arose, bringing with it a huge sea. The boat seemed to be mode of paper, as it waa

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dashed into tho shore and swept back again by the receding wave. Most of the people on board wero drowned, but the boat, by a curious chance, floated and escaped serious injury. Pulco and a few other survivors, after the first panic, made their way on shore to Messina, and found it like a city of the dead. There was nobody about, and the profound silence was only broken by the moans, groans, and shrieks of the injured. Pulso and his companions tried to rescue some of them, but tho task was beyond their power owing to tho condition of the wrecked houses.

The captain of tho Russian cruiser | Admiral Makaroff, told of similar ex- I periences. After tho shock there wore no fewer than four groat waves in sucoes- I sion, the sea rising from 12 to 25 and even 30 foot high. He saw a' few survivors wandering about tho shore, half naked, starved, mad with terror. Two babies were found gravely playing with buttons. Many children wero found clinging despairingly to dead Ixxlies of mothers. Russian sailors saved numl»ors of children, many of whom wero habies, and carried them on board. Several people were stricken with madness and tottered on deck, shielding their heads with their arms, as though still in the midst of falling masonry. In all the Russian sailors saved more than a thousand people in Messina, which was wrecked by the earthquake, and half obliterated by the sea. Reggio was forsaken for three whole days, and it was only after tho arrival of King Victor that systematic rescue work was attempted. Every town within twenty-five miles was wrecked. Tho Bank of Naples and the Bank of Italy were about the only buildings left standing in Reggio. The water supply completely disappeared, and no bread wus available.