TRAGEDY AT SEA

Otago Witness, Issue 2817, 11 March 1908, Page 29

TRAGEDY AT SEA

AN EXTRAORDINARY CRIME. MEN FORCED TO JUMP OVERBOARD. SYDNEY, March 9. A sensational sequel to the recently reported mysterious wreck of a schooner with a man and a cabin boy aboard at the Apamama Lagoon, in the Gilbert group, is to hand by the Island steamer Germania. Mr Hayes, an employee of Mr Burns, visited the wrecked schooner, and obtained a statement from the cabin boy (Jackson). The schooner, which was named the Neuvre Tigre, sailed under the Italian flag, being owned by the master and mate. / She left. Call ao early in November, with a cargo of 50 tons of coke. The crew consisted of the captain, mate, cook (who was a Belgian named Mortimer), and Jackson. The first day out the cook attacked the mate with a tomahawk, wounding him in the head, but the mate escaped into the rigging. The captain, hearing the scuffle, came out of his cabin, and the cook felled him. with the tomahawk. The cook then secured a gun, and compelled the captain and mate, under threats of shooting tbem, to jump overboard. The cook scared Jackson into assisting him to jettison the cargo and do other work. - Mortimer told Jackson that he intended to call at Tahiti, and then go to Australia, where he hoped to sell the schooner, the name of which he took the precaution to paint out. They had plenty of provisions aboard, but after they had drifted about for weeks the vessel was finally driven ashore at Apamama. This statement is similar to the confession which Jackson made to the Island authorities at the time of his arrest.