MAIL NEWS.

Gisborne Times, Volume X, Issue 941, 14 July 1903, Page 4

MAIL NEWS.

.TWO STEAMERS COLLIDE.

LOSS OF ONE HUNDRED LIVES,

(Per R.M.S. Sierra at Auckland.)SAN FRANCISCO, June 25. A despatch from Marseilles, France!, dated June 7, states : More than one hundred people perished to-day, in a collision between! the Insulaire and Liban, passenger steamers belonging to • the Fraisenet Steamship Company. The Liban left here this morning, on her regular trip to Bastia, Corsica, and was run down and sunk by the Insulaire, off the Maire Islands. The collision was witnessed from the pilot boat Blechamp, two miles away. The Blechamp hastened to render assistance. The collision cut a great hole in the side of the Liban. .The captain tried to run the vesisel aground, but seventeen minutes after the collision, while still in deep water, the fore part of the steamer (plunged beneath the waves, and a few minutes later the vessel disappeared. ' Meantime the other vessels drew near, and made desperate efforts to i rescue the sufferers. The Blechamp picked up forty persons, and the Balkan rescued thirty-seven (officers say that the scene just before the .Liban disappeared was terrible). As the vessel sank, it inclined to such an angle that the masts struck the water, causing an eddy, which made ,the work of rescue very difficult. A mass of human beings clung to the foundering vessel, uttering ing cries as it went down? At the same time the* boilers exploded, intensifying the horrors of the situation. For a few minutes the victims were seen struggling in the sea, and then the waves closed over them. Of two hundred persons on the Lilian, it is feared that half were drowned."

It is stated that the Liban was putting to sea as the Intulaire was making port, and that Maire Island-, off the entrance to the port, hid the vessels from each other until it was too late to avoid a collision.

A passenger says : All the passengers were below at the tables when the shrieking of whistles gave an alarm. Coming on deck I saw the Insulaire approaching us at full .speed. The captain gave several orders. Apparently no attempt was made to change the course of the iship. Some of the passengers reproached the captain. When the crash came, a panic prevailed. Attempts were made to lower the boats, but only one boat got away, and on that I and a few others escaped. As the vessel sank bow first, the passengers took refuge on theafter deck, which was covered by an awning. This, as the Liban foundered, became a cage in which the people were caught and dragged beneath the water.

PREFERENTIAL TARIFF,

LONDON, June 2d

Ninety-eight Unionist members of the House of Commons held a meeting at * Westminster to-night, and passed resolutions endorsing the Government’s inquiry into _ Great Britain’s fiscal relations with foreign Powers. The meeting pledged itself to support Mr Chamberlain’s policy The Secretary, Mr Herbert Maxwell, in the course of a sp?ech, made the significant statement that the general election might be expected in three months, and hence it was necessary that the Unionist party should prepare for the struggle that would 1 develop on the issue of an Imperial preferential tariff.-