SAVED EIGHTY LIVES

Evening Star, Issue 22454, 26 September 1936, Page 7

SAVED EIGHTY LIVES

i Janos Pecs, a boatman of the town of Baja, Hungary, celebrated his thirtieth year of service to the ' Danube Navigation Company, during, which time We has saved 80 persons from drowning. In 1913 Pecs received the Silver Cross of Mefrit from the Emperor,' Francis Joseph, having rescued 42 persons by that /date. Other rewards 1 for his bravery have been conspicuous by their absence, only four or five of the rescued persons showing their gratitude by presenting their rescuer with a shilling. Orf one occasion Pecs saved 'the beautifull daughter of a fisherman from deat/i, when she had been jilted by a younig man from Budapest; Singlehanded, Pecs succeeding in saving four officers, whose boat capsized in the swift currents at the centre of the Dariube; and another catastrophe was thq npsetting of a boat containing nine persons, all of whom were saved. ’When asked by a journalist whether he; could swim Pecs winked and replied “/as much as a hatchet.’’ Pecs’s forSane consists only of a smaill house on he quay and a salary of three shillings u day. When asked what reward he would consider adequate for his record in. life-saving, Pecs replied that he wanted nothing except renjewed health for his wife, who has had' two strokes of paralysis and has been bedridden for four years. ' J