COMMANDER WORSLEY

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 15 November 1924, Page 20

COMMANDER WORSLEY

- y HOW HE SAVED HIS CREW. - LONDON, Oct 7. One has ne.er to wait very iuug .be, lore Hearing or some hew au.eiuhte ill i.mcli ccnmiianue.- fi rank Worsley is tile central figure. Betwebu official -vii carcue expeditions he seems to have a preference for ships of doubtful seaworthiness. Before going on the last Shackleton Expedition he was engaged in sailing a cockle-shell of a vessel up to Iceland and back. Among’other things, on one occasion he had to put a chain round the hull of the vessel and attach the two ends to the mast. This was to prevent the , mast from being - blown overboard. . On that occasion lie managed to get the tiny vessel .nick to safety after a very tempestuous passage.

One piglit recently he left Kirkwall, in the Orkney Islands, for Newfoundland, but immediately encountered a fierce gale. The vessel, in the darkness, with the seas running mountains high, struck on the Green Holms, a low-lying portion of land off Edav island j in the Orkney group, and began to break up. Realising the ship’s plight and the peril of his crew, commander Worsley dropped from the bowsprit into, the raging sea with a. line which he made fast ashore. He then struggled back to the ship, and by means’ of the rope the whole crew gained the shore in safety. The sin? became a total wreck. The commander and his men were exposed to the gale and torrents of rain for eight hours, and were then taken off by the steamer St; Ala gnus and taken to Kirkwall. In speaking of the wreck Commander Worsley said that when the ship struck it was so dark that he could not see anything. He ran a line ashore be•■ai.se he was afraid the ship would go to pieces. “I ordered the men one by one to jump for the rope,” he added, “and haul themselves up the rocks. The orders to jump were given at moments when I judged that the breakers had receded to their maximum, and I also a flowed jor the natural momentary imitation to* make the leap. By tin-, time each man was in/the water he had the assistance of the rmcoir’iitr waves to bear him shore wards. One man, in his excitement, grasped the wrong rope. It almost cost him his life, but some of the crew alreadv ■shove, ran into the water and seized him.”