ABANDONED AT SEA

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 226, 18 May 1932, Page 5

ABANDONED AT SEA

(Press. Assn.-

STEAMERS RUSHING TO AID OF PASSENGERS AND CREW SHIP A TOTAL LOSS One of the Iatest French luxury liners, the Geoirges Philippar a 17,000 tdn vessel belongirtg to the Messageries Marltime, and employed in the trade hetwedn jVIarSeilles and the Fdr East, is dja fire a few miles off Cape Guardafui, on the African Coast at the entrance to the Gulf of Aden. The passengers have abandoned the ship, whifch is reported to have been reduced to a blistered hulk. Several of those on board are reported to have spffered severe btirns, but details concerning loss of life are at present meagre. The owners suspect incendiarism, the work of Chinese Communists as the cause of the disaster.

-By Telegraph — Copyrlgnt).

Rec. May 17, 8.50 p.m. ADEN, Monday. The latest Messageries Maritime liner, the 17,000 tonner Georges Philippar bound to Marseilles from China caught fire five miles from Cape Guardafui. The 600 passengers have abandoned the ship, three being badly burnt. The Hakone Maru, when hurrying to the scene, passed an empty lifeboat. The loss of life is not yet known. The British liners Otranto and Kaiser-i-Hind are raeing to pick up the passengers. The Liverpool vessels, Mahsud and Contractor and the Russian naphtha ship Sovietskaia have already arrived. A later message states that the abandoned hulk of the Georges Philippar had by sundown drifted 20 miles north of Guardafui. Water was hissing in steam from her blistering sides. It cannot yet be said whether the entire ship's company has been saved, though it is hoped they are distributed amongst the rescuing vessels. Two British steamers, the Contractor and the Mahsud, are hastening to port with respectively 129 and 134 survivors aboard. The Philippar's commander, Captain Vicq and 400 others are helieved to be aboard the Russian tanker Sovietskaia, whose wireless operators are "tongue-tied" by the difference in language and they are unable to communicate details.