MAN OVERBOARD

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2736, 22 May 1924, Page 2

MAN OVERBOARD

AN AMAZING STORY.

Auckland, May 21. An amazing story almost, as incredible in some details as one of Poe’s “Tales of Mystery and Imagination,’’ was brought to Auckland by the s.s. Dorset. At'2.3ft a.m. on April 23rd. when 12ft miles from Panama and thirty miles from the coast, a shout was heard from the water. The steamer immediately stopped and in one and n-half minutes the accident boat was away in charge of the chief officer, 11. S. White, and offer some manoeuvring a mail’s head was seen bobbing up and down ir. the water. He was wearing a cork belt, and clung to a ship’s lifebelt. He was in the last stages of exhaustion. The rescued man was Clermont Lafayette Staden, aged 21, of Brooklyn, New York, and his story breathed of something strange and bizarre. He was, lie said, a fireman on the American oil tank steamer Fred W. Weller, eu route from San Pedro, California, to New York. VESSEL DID NOT STOP. At 4 a.m. the previous day he fell overboard. According to his account someone threw him a lifebuoy and belt, but strangely enough the vessel did not stop, or, if she did, did not remain long. Then commenced an interminable ordeal. The powerful current carried him along at. a fair pace towards the coast, and by noon he could see surf breaking in a large bay. He made a terrific effort to swim into it, but the current gripped him. APPROACHED BY SHARKS. He states that in this hay he was approached by two large sharks which providentially left him after circling round him two or three times. At this lime, too, lie avers, he was tormented by great .jellyfish which stung his body, and by sea snakes which left a trail of slime over him as they circled his limbs. Finally, he stales, a large seabird came near, and continually rested on top of his lifebuoy. This portion of Staden’s story reads more like a passage from Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner.” The young seaman describes how the current carried him away from the roast and how in the afternoon he sighted n sailing vessel about two miles off. PROVID ENTTA T. RERCUE. The providential manner in which l.e was eventually rescued capped Ids remarkable experience with an almost incredible cjimax. The Dorset must have passed the seaman by

a hare 13 feel or so. and the young mini's own account is thot be saw :lie lights of the steamer hearing ■■lmight down upon him. He called icpcnlcdly, dreading lest he should hr villi.-r mil 4 1 1 • w;i or passed by. ni'iii-. m of j lie Dorset state that m view of the notorious shark in tested condition of the Cult' of Pn■onia, it was a thousand to one that a white man would not have survived fstaden’s experience.