British Shipping Disasters.

Manawatu Herald, 6 April 1899, Page 2

British Shipping Disasters.

Another serious incident of the fog was the wreck of the large French barque the Marschallanes on the coast of Pembrokeshire, the south-western portion of Wales. The vessel was making her maiden voyage, and was bound from Swansea, in Glamorganshire, one of the chief coal ports of South Wales, to San Francisco, heavily laden with coals. The whole of the crew, which numbered twenty-five men, was lost. The Tyser Company's steamer Star of New Zealand has returned to Gravesend, at the mouth of the river Thames, having suffered damage in a collision. She had started on her trip to the colonies, and in steaming down the English Channel during the recent heavy fog she came into collision oft Beachy Head with the German cattle steamer Pontos, which was coming from a South American port. The Pontos received such damage that she sank very shortly after the collision. As yet the extent of the damage to the Star of New Zealand has not been ascertained. She is now discharging the dynamite portion of her cargo, preparatory to survey. , The Star of New Zealand is a wellknown trader. She is under the charge of Captain Reed, and was to have left London at the beginning of April for Wellington via Australia, Auckland and the East Coast.' The Pontos was a steel screw steamer of 2014 tous net, built in 1895, and was owned by A. C. de Freitas and Co., of Hamburg. The survivors of the wreck of the Stella, the excursion steamer of the London and South Western Railway Company- -which was wrecked oft the coast of Alderney, one of the Channel Islands, during the Easter holidays, with heavy loss of life relate touching stories of the heroism of one of the stewardesses of the vessel, a young woman named Rogers. Miss Rogers was repeatedly urged to enter the boats that had been lowered to take away the women and children, but persistently refused so long as there was work still to be done, and continued to serve out life-belts to the male passengers. The vessel sank while the young woman was still occupied, and she was among those who perished. While the ship's boats with the women and children on board were drifting about in the dark after the foundering of the Stella Miss Greta Williams, a vocalist, sang " O rest in the Lord."