CASTAWAY'S ORDEAL

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 86, 2 December 1931, Page 7

CASTAWAY'S ORDEAL

FOUND IN SMALL BOAT AFTER SEARCH BY PLANES. FREAK SHIP FOUNDERED. NEW YORK, Saturday. After having miraculously lived through a terrific storm that swept the West Indies early in the week, a x,arty of shipwreeked sailors in an open boat was found to-day with the aid of aeroplanes. Of the 16 who had left their ship I when it foundered after striking a dereliet on a reef, five had died in the boat. j The mail 'plane from Rio de Janeiro to New York, while crossing the Cari ribean Sea last week-end, sighted a : lifeboat crowded with eastaways, and j flying a shred of a shirt from the top j of an oar as a signal of distress. The derelicts evidently were in the last stages of misery, bobbing drunkenly in the rough seas, but all the pilot could do was to fly in a circle over them, wave a greeting, send out an S.O.S., giving their position, and then fly to his destination. Within a few hours, a dozen ships were cruising in the vicinity, |but terrible weather jintervened, culminating in a storm which swept Panama, with a rainfall of 11 inches in 35 hours. Yesterday aeroplanes were again called into service, scpuring the seas until the eastaways were sighted early this morning. Eleven living were rescued. Five were dead. The captain, Hewitt Walter, the only Englishman in the party, was badly injured, and became unconscious soon after heing ) rescued. They came from the schooner Baden Baden, which was well known five years ago, as the freak rotorship, invented by Anton Flettner, and which recently had been engaged in the coast trade. She left Rio Racha in Columbia on November 5, bound north.