“REAL HELL SHIP”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 January 1939, Page 5

“REAL HELL SHIP”

TROUBLE ON AMERICAN SCHOONER STORMY OUTCOME OF HUNT FOR TREASURE. MUTINY IN SOUTH SEAS. (Independent Cable Service.) (Received This Day, 10.30 a.m.) HOLLYWOOD. January 12. An amazing story of mutiny and violence during a South Sea treasure hunt is being unfolded before a Federal grand jury.

The principal witness is Captain Robert Hoffman, of the schooner Metha Nelson. The vessel left San Pedro in September, with a crew of amateurs, and sailed to Cocos Island, where the treasure was supposed to be buried. Countess Dorothy Di Fraso, a wellknown member of the film colony, and' Marino Bello, stepfather of the late Jean Harlow, were among the treasure -seekers.

After- a week's fruitless digging, everyone lost their temper. Captain Hoffman said, and the Metha Nelson became a "real hell ship." Drunk for three days, the boatswain, Rolf Barrman, terrorised the ship with a gun. Plied with gin and incited by two of the "guests” the crew defied the captain’s authority. “I knocked some discipline into them; I shackled some to stanchions,” declared Captain Hoffman, who added that Countess Fraso asked him to shoot Charles Segal, one of the ringleaders, because she feared he was planning to "seize the ship and hold her to ransome.

Captain Hoffman revealed that he married Marino Bello to Evelyn Husby, the ship’s nurse, a few days after the voyage began. Finally the schooner, with her mutinous crew, was towed back to port.