WRECK VICTIMS

Southland Times, Issue 18856, 23 June 1920, Page 7

WRECK VICTIMS

AN INCIDENT OF THE ATHENIC’S VOYAGE HOME. Miss Felicia McLaren, lately of St. Kilda, Dunedin, who left Wellington on the Atbenic on April 5, to return to Scotland, relates in a letter (published in the Otago Daily Times) to her relatives the following experience of the rescue of a shipwrecked company while nearing Newport, on the other side of the Panama Canal:— We should have arrived at Newport today (May 5) but we were delayed 12 hours on Sunday as we rescued a shipwrecked crew. On Sunday night about 9.30 o’clock the engines stopped dead and we all wondered what had happened. We soon learned, however, that there was a ship ashore on the island of San Salvador (the land Columbus saw first when He set forth to discover the New World). It was too dark then to look for the shipwrecked people, but it was a beautiful calm evening and the unfortunates had all been taken into the lifeboats and would be all right till morning. We therefore stood by until morning—or rather, we went slowly round and round in circles until daybreak—and we then picked up the shipwrecked people. The boat, the s.s. Munamai, was on her way from Cuba to New York with 83 passengers. She went too near the island and struck a coral reef and she was fast filling with water. We took the passengers, mails and baggage on board and the captain and crew remained behind on the boat to see what they could do. They are quite near the island so they will be quite all right until the salvage people come along to see if the boat can be saved. The new passengers are Yankees, along with about 30 niggers. There have been a great many complaints about the poor niggers being accommodated along with white people, but what could one do under the circumstances? Anyway, they will all be landed at Newport to-morrow. They are sleeping in the smokerooms and libraries. They certainly make one feel a bit creepy, but still they will be all gone to-morrow. It was quite an exciting experience, both for us and for the rescued people.