EVIDENCE AT INQUIRY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 99, 17 December 1931, Page 5

EVIDENCE AT INQUIRY

(Press Assn.

ENGLISH MATE SAYS YESSEL NEITHER FIRED ON NOR CHASED UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENT

— By Telegraph — Copyright).

OSLO, Tuesday. When the inquiry into the loss of the rum-runner Venus opened at Maaloey, Savage, the mate, caused surprise by declaring that she was neither chased nor fired upon. She left Rotterdam on November 5 and Lerwick on Decemher 1 and thereafter cruised in the North Sea. The captain alone determined the course, and nohody else participated in the navigation and the vessel, for all the crew'knew, might have heen off Iceland riot Norway when she was wrecked. She carried 1800 two gallon cans of liquor, none of which had been diseharged prior to the-wreek. The Lerwick Excise offieer's seal thereon had not heen broken until half an hour hefore foundering, when the cans were emptied and used for floats for the construction of rafts. The captain ordered five men to take to the lifehoat and row to a lighthouse. They had not sufficient lifebelts and were drowned when the hoat capsized. The two rafts supporting four men each, were made in desperate haste. The captain ordered the anchor to be dropped to check the vessel's drift, but it did not hold and the Venus continfied • • to -drift shoreward broadside on. ' She struck 9, rock, heeled over and flung the remainder of the crew into the water. Savage and a fireman (Davidson) seized the same piece of wreekage "but could not help the captain and engineer who were afloat close by. Savage declared that his memory was a blank after being thrown into the water.