HUN PIRATES’ ORGIE ON STOLEN WINES.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 15 June 1917, Page 2

HUN PIRATES’ ORGIE ON STOLEN WINES.

WOMAN’S ORDEAL IN AN OPEN

BOAT.

What a vast difference there is between the British and German ideas of the meaning of “freedom of the seas” is vividly shown by the follow-

ing incidents. The Swedish x schooner Dag was stopped by a German submarine at 4 a.m. on Tuesday, March 13, when 200 miles west of the Scillies. The captain and his wife, together with the crew of eight men, were given fifteen minutes in which to abandon the vessel, which was then torpedoed and sunk.

The submarine then approached the boat, and demanded the ship’s papers, which were given to the German commander. whereupon the submarine departed, leaving nine men and a woman in an open and partly damaged boat 200 miles from the nearest land. The weather was bad, and the’insufficient warning given only enabled scantiest rations to be embarked.

For four days and three nights the beat drifted at the mercy of the wind and currents, until eventually a lightship was sighted. The occupants were in a pitiable plight when reesued, and on the verge of starvation. The captain’s wife is making but slow progress towards recovery after her terrible experience. This is the second case within a week in which a German submarine has deliberately abandoned an open boat in mid-ocean with a woman in the crowded company of men for a period of several days and nights. To find a parallel to such acts of detestable and callous brutality it would be necessary to search the worst records of mediaeval piracy. That they should be perpetrated at the~Tnstigation of the German Government extends the stigma of depravity from the individual to the nation.

The number -of the submarine by which this outrage was committed is

known to the British Government. The master of the Norwegian sailing ship Collingwood reports that his ship was sunk by a German submarine on March 12. The officers and crew of the submarine were drunk. When handed the papers of the Collingwood the commander of the submarine said that there would be time enough to examine the papers when the submarine got home, and he ordered the Collingwood’s crew to leave the ship in ten minutes.

It is concluded that the officers and crew of the submarine obtained champagne and cognac from the cargo of the French sailing vessel Jules Gomez, sunk about two hours previously in the same vicinity.