NAZI SHIP TRACKED.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 242, 10 September 1940, Page 10

NAZI SHIP TRACKED.

'W AIM ARAM A’S GOOD WORK

THRILLING STORY REVEALED

LONDON, Aug. 10.

Eor 30 hours last November two ships steamed side by side in African waters, only a short distance separating them. Both were sending out wireless messages at hourly intervals, and their signals were being read avidly in Berlin and Whitehall.

The ships were the Shaw, Savill and Albion liner Waimarama and the German merchantman Adolf Woermaiin. For more than a day they rose to every wave together. On the two bridges anxious eyes, scanned the horizon. Would a British cruiser appear, or would the Graf Spee shoot suddenly into sight over the brim of the ocean ?

On the bridge of the Waimarama Captain James Avern was impatient with the burden of a great responsibility. He had a valuable cargo on board and many passengers. He was standing off his course for his suspicions had been aroused by the Adolf Woermann, badly disguised as a Portuguese. She was a valuable prize for Britain —if he could keep sending out her position to the Royal Navy so that she could be - captured and taken to port. Yet, if the Graf Spec, known to bo in those waters, arrived first, his ship would bo 6unk, passengers might bo killed, and thousands of pounds lost to his company and the Empire. After a long wait a British cruiser steamed into sight, and with a triumphant blast from her siren and another splutter of messages from the wireless room, the Waimarama set off on her course for Australia and New Zealand. For his action Captain Avern was awarded the 0.8. E. Last week he attended the investiture at Buckingham Palace to receive his decoration from the King, and the Admiralty allowed the story to be told for the first time.

Captain Avern would have preferred to say nothing about the incident. “It all happened so long ago that there’6 really nothing to it, he said. “When wo were off the Cape on the way to Australia, the chief officer reported the mast and funnel of a ship on the horizon nearly ahead. Having had an Admiralty message to aay that a German ship was trying to get -away from a West African port, I altered course to eastward.

“I thought she looked a bit suspicious so I went and investigated. Finding she was rather poorly disguised as a Portuguese, I kept her under observation and eventually, thanks to the Royal Navy, I was able to hand her over. That’s all there was to it. Now don’t make a song about it, please.”