WONDERFUL RESCUE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9370, 12 February 1909, Page 6

WONDERFUL RESCUE.

A marvellous rescue of a woman and a baby from the cabin of a capsized vessel cp.me to light on the arrival of the liner Oceanic at Plymouth. While twelve miles from Rnataa Island the British schooner Annie, commanded by Captain O. M. Decker, was capsized by a whirlwind accompanying a waterspout which formed immediately over the ship, " 9, When the vessel turned over, Captain Decker and the crew climbed over the side and clung to the keel. * Mrs Decker"was in the cabin, and her baby was‘lying in its cradle at the moment of the accident. She was thrown down, and pitched through the door of her cabin into the companion-way. Although severely cut and bruised, she managed to crawl back to the crib; and threw her husband’s oilskins over it to protect the child from being hurt by tbe debris. By that time h«r husband and the crew had climbed around the broadside of the sinking vessel. Disentangling the two boats as quickly as possible, they went through a small porthole to the rescue of Mrs Decker and the infant. Meanwhile, Mrs Decker, with admirable presence of mind, hurriedly knotted a rope out of an oilcoat and other things, and for a few moments there was a desperate battle for the lives of the two imprisoned ones. The vessel was rapidly filling with water, and the cabin was half-fnll, when tbe plucky mother managed to make a rope basket for tbe baby and saw that tbe infant was safely hoisted through tbe aperture. Then her husband and the others succeeded in pulling her, more dead than alive, from the cabin.