SEA. HEROISM

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 880, 25 January 1930, Page 28

SEA. HEROISM

U FATHER S WILL REVEALS !j SON'S CONDUCT l i ; SINKING OF PATHFINDER ■ i ■ i A Bath mother is jealously guard- , j ing the secret of the whereabouts of ! ; j her two sons, one of whom is stated ! to have saved 11 lives when his ship l was sunk during; the war. The story of his heroic action has 1 j come to light through the publica- | tion of the will of his father. Dr. Ed- I : ward Adolf Sonnenschein, a university professor, of Sion Hill Place. Bath, j Dr. Sonnenschein left £9,356. He bequeathed a quarter of the residue j i after his wife’s death to his son Ed- ( ward Jamie Somerset and three- j fourths to his son, Edward Oliver Stallybrass. Dr. Sonnenschein says in his will that the latter bequest is because this son has not the same means as his elder brother and in recogni- • tion of his services to the country during the whole period of the war. and in particular of his gallant con- i duct on the occasion of the sinking of the Pathfinder on September 5. 1914, when he saved many li\ T es, a service which has never been publicly recognised by the Admiralty or otherwise. Both the sons, who were English born, served with the British forces during the war. Mr. E. O. Sonnenschein was a sub-lieutenant in the light cruiser Pathfinder when she was sunk. Both sons are now in thennary,\ r y, but no longer bear the name of Sonnenschein, and their mother declines to say yvhat names they use. She learned of the Pathfinder incident through a letter from her son soon after it occurred. She told a reporter: “After describing how he had fixed lifebelts on ten men and saved the life of the ship’s surgeon by lashing him to a plank, my son mentioned that he fixed a lifebelt on himself. “After the boat went down the men were left floating on the wreckage in their lifebelts waiting for destroy-ers to come to their aid. In the meantime my son encouraged the men to sing to keep their spirits up, and he told us he recited Kipling’s poem ’lf.’ ” Mr. Rudyard Kipling's “If” begins: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you . . .”