"RUNNING BLIND" IN THE CHANNEL

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2421, 29 March 1915, Page 6

"RUNNING BLIND" IN THE CHANNEL

e AMERICAN RELIEF SHIP'S TRYING EXPERIENCE. How the American Belgian relief ship Massapequa rail blind at night through the darkened English Channel, and almost foundered because all familiar lights were out, was recently told by Captain E. M. M'Carthy on his return to New York after having delivered a Rockefeller Foundation cargo for Belgian. Captain M'Carthy said:— "The night I arrived in the English Channel I ran into a firce south-west gale, and for twelve hours I was on the bridge trying io find a light I could recognise. The lights at Beach,y Head and at Dungenors were out; in recent weeks they have not been operated by the English. The English have replaced them with numbered lights, but as I was not familiar with them I could not steer by them. I did not know at what minuta I might run ashore.

"I beat back and forth on a short course, waiting for daylight. Finally, at six o'clock in the morning, when I was not very far from tlio English shore, daylight came, and I was able to pick up an English patrol ship, which examined my papers and gave mo directions for making my way through tlio neutral passage and the North Sea. At Rotterdam tlio cargo was turned over to the officials of the Commission, and immediately went into Belgium, On one of the freight lighters which received some of our cargo, I found'living it Belgian refugee family which had no other home."