OPEN BOATS

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3014, 27 February 1917, Page 6

OPEN BOATS

THE REMEDY FOR SEA MURDERS (By Alfred Noyes, in the "Morning ■ Post.") The attitude of the Central Powers towards the open 'boat murders is an entirely cynical one. Enough has already . been said to show that, in the very nature of things, there can be no foreseen security for passengers and orews consigned to open boats many miles out of sight of land. And this is tho cynical method of imposing upon credulous landsmen adopted by the Central Powers: "Note Verbale,_Vienna, 25/9/16. "The Imperial andi Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs has the honour to bring the following information received from the Imperial and Royal Ministry of War, Naval Division to the knowledge of the American Embassy:

, "Thea steamer Windermere was sunk by mechanical devices by a detached crew from ail Austro-Hnngarian submarine, after.the steamer's crew had left the ship in well-equipped lifeboats. Nothing further is known to the Imperial and Royal authorities about the crew's fate. In view of the fact that, at the critical time, there was fine weather, only a slight breeze and' a moderate sea, any accident the boat might have met with would, in the opinion of the Imperial ?nd Royal Ministry of War, Naval Division, have to be ascribed to an event not to be foreIllogical British Attitude. The "unforeseen event" in the case of the Windermere came about thus: She was a steamer bound from Tyne Dock to Savona, in Italy, with a cargo of coal. When she left Gibraltar the weather, as the' Imperial and Royal Magnificoes asserted, was clear and fine. The wind was in the east, blow; ing lightly, with a' smooth sea. At 4.30 in the afternoon she was making about eight knots, when an unknown steamer was sighted on the western horizon, about six miles away, and the report of a gun was heard. The chief officer, John Fergusson, saw through his glasses that there was a submarine, about two miles distant, between himself and tho 6teamer. He calle'd the master from the chart-room, and l he ordered the helm to he put hard aport. The "U" boat then fired a shell, which passed about twenty yards a-starboard. The ship was stopped and all hands were ordered to the boats, hut another shell was fired! whilo they were actually engaged in this. Fergusson ' and eleven men got into number one lifeboat, while the master and eleven men got into the other. By this time tho submarine was close at hand, and one of her officers asked for the master, who stood up in the boat. The officer asked various questions about the ship, and eventually gave the master the course to Port Mahon. Tlie -master asked the distance and was told) that it was about forty miles. Now, every sailor knows, unless he be an Imperial and Royal Magnifico of the Naval Division of the Austrian Ministry of War, that nothing can be "foreseen" about the fato or open boats forty miles from land. ~ „ The Plea of "Unforeseeable."

The cliief officer's boat made more lieaaway than the master's, as her sail was larger; and three times sho turned in order to keep company with him. Arthur Brace, tlio second engineer, Rave the following account of the unforeseeable: — . "The third time we stopped the master said to the mate, 'Keep more to the South. , After that we did not get into speaking distance, and we saw ner light for the laet time-about 11 p.m. She was aparently following.the same course as ourselves. •Wβ held on our course till we sighted. Majorca about noon on the following day; and ran past the lighthouse point into a small bay (Las Sabinas). We landed on the beach, and were taken to an inn, where we had supper and slept." The rest was telegrams from anxious relatives to the owners, and from the owners to the' Admiralty: those curiously pleading telegrams, in which the human emotion is expressed unconsciously by the pathetic implication that those in authority maf somehow change bad news into good. "We do hope that you will soon send us news of missing boati Relatives anxious. "We sincerely trust tliat ..." ' But the "unforeseeable" has lmppened. The missing boat was never found, thougli six feluccas were . dispatched to search for "her; and there was nothing left to telegraph, but our deep regret." The sea keeps her secrets well. , ' ■ .. - The , plea of "unforeseeable" i 5,.,. 0r course, vitiated by the plain fact that hundreds of men. have been forced to fiaht with every known danger of the sea in their "open boats." The crew of tlie Scottish Monarch (a small ship with a cargo of sugar , ! could certainly foresee something of the fate that was in store for them when they were attacked by a U-boat about forty miles south from .the Ballvcotton T.ight. After, four rounds of shell from the wiremng submarine, which holed the shin on the port side, the .master stopped the engines and or&red all "hands to the boats, which were successfully lauiranpd. The master,at first refusal to leave the ship and remained on_ the bridge, while the submarine continued firinn- at her till she began to sink. The chief officer then nsked permission by signs to take off the master; and th 9 onemv ceased firing until this was done. TVhen tlie master left her.the j decks of the Scottish Monarch were awash. A Tare to Fouse Civilisation. Tlie master and nineteen of the crew were in one boat, and fifteen of the crew were in the other. The two boats kept together till dark, but at 8.40 the chief officer's boat capsized owing to the choppy sea, and sight of the other boat was lost in the confusion. All hands, after a struggle, managed to iegain the boat, but she remained full of water, with her tanks adrift. Before midnight she had again capsized three times, and the reader may imagine for himself what scenes, were enacted in j that lonely darkness of wind ,and sea. ." Only four hands out of the fifteen were i left at the end of the third desperate struggle. .They were the mate,' the carpenter, and two seamen. They saw one or two vessels in the early morning, but their only means of signalling was a handkerchief on a stock, and they were not noticed. The boat was battered to' and fro like a cockleshell in the smoking seas, and about eight o'clock in the morning the two seamen ! became too exhausted to cling on. They were slowly washed overboard. Their faces and hands swirled up once or twice in the foam and then disappeared. At five o'clock on that day, after long hours of struggle, the mate, who was sitting aft. gradually dropped into the water in the bottom of the boat and died there. The carpenter was now the only survivor. All that he endured in the long following night and day, with the dead man washing to and fro at his feet and the dead face looking up at him through the bubbling water, can only be imagined. He says that "nothing particular" happened. At nightfall on the next day, more than twenty-four hours later, twenty-four hours of lonely battering and slow starvation, he find the dead body were picked up by a. Grimsby trawler and landed at St. Ives. Nothing was ever heard of the other boat. But from what wo know we can conjecture what happened to the unknown. It is a tale to rouse tho whole civilised world, if, any civilisation were left. For these were non-combatants on a small ship, entirely unarmed for offenceor defence, and carrying "only a cargo of sugar I