DISTRESSED COLONY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 December 1938, Page 8

DISTRESSED COLONY

FRENCH WARSHIP SPEEDING TO RESCUE members of expedition AT VARIANCE. ON ISLAND OF SAINT PAUL. Ry Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright. (Received This Day, 1.5 p.m.) PARIS, December 20. A French warship is speeding to the rescue in response to a wireless appeal from a colony suffering from scurvy on the island of Saint Paul. Dissemon among members of the expedition io serious and each of five married couples, among whom there are two babies, is living in separate quarters. The members of the expedition intend’d to spend three years on St Paul. Another message states that an amaceur shortwave radio operator in the United States picked up an S.O.S. from l he French trawler He de Bourbon, at ■he island of St Paul, in the Indian Ocean, which was passed on to Admiril Lackey, commander of the American squadron visiting Villefranche. Admiral Lackey advised the French Govsrnment, which ordered Madagascai to make contact by radio with the trawl-

trawler left Brittany last May carrying forty-eight members of an expedition to establish a lobster fishery and form a French colony on St Paul. The S.O.S. reported that coal had run) out as a result of bad weather and that the position was critical. The expedition is under Commander H. De Boar. St Paul has acquired an dl repute as a result of the failure of m expedition in 1929, which was wiped out by 'disease.