A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9529, 29 June 1909, Page 5

A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE.

CALAMITY ON A NAVAL COLLIER.

SAILORS SUFFOCATED BY POISONOUS FUMES.

Received June 28, 11 p.m. PORT DARWIN, June 28. Eastern files to hand contain details' of a calamity on board the American naval collier Nausbau, which arrived at Hongkong on the sth inst, from Cavite (a decayed seaport of Luzon, in the Philippines). En route the vessel met a typhoon and shipped several huge seas, which stove in the forward bulkhead The water penetrated the paint room, where the stores soon got adrift, and the escaping naphtha caused foul gases. After the gale the chief officer, named Larkin, and another officer, named Rapp, with ?ome members of the Filippino crew, went below £to put things right. Subsequently Captain Carver, missing the officers, went in search of them.

A couple of hours later the bcs'un came up, covered with a sticky mixture, and almost suffocated. When he recovered he reported that the captain, the two officers, and several ot the crew lay in the paint locker suffocated. Saunderson, the only officer left, headed a rescue party, and they could see the bodes awash, black from the mixture of tar and water. When the foul gases had been somewhat cleared by means of a wind sheet, a Filiopino quartermaster, named De-la-Cruz volunteered to go down, and was lowered into the paint room. He secured one body, and although suffering severely at each attempt, being almost overcome with the fumes arising from the mixture of nsphtha and water, De-la-Ouz pers's;ed in his heroic efforts, bringing up seven bodies one by one. The efforts at resuscitation wera stressful in the cases of Captain Carver and one of the Filippinos, but Larkin, Rapo, and three other Filippinos are dead. Captain Carver was badly injured, Saundersou brought the collier to Hongkong.