NO PANIC

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 June 1939, Page 6

NO PANIC

STORY TOLD BY THETIS SURVIVOR MEN AT FIRST CONFIDENT OF RESCUE. RELIEF EXPECTED IN FEW HOURS By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received This Day, 12.30 p.m.) LONDON. June 6. A Thetis survivor, Leading-Stoker W. E. Arnold, relating his experiences, said that people shouted from the control room "Surface!” Scrambling from a forward compartment and then from a second compartment, he got into accommodation space. “We could not shut the door for a few seconds,” he said, “owing to the angle of the boat, but eventually managed it. The Thetis was then hanging at the steepest angle I had ever known. No water came into the third chamber. There was no panic and no thought of disaster. All were calm and confident. We joked and felt sure we would get to the top within a few hours.”

“I would like to say a word for the poor men down there now,” Stoker Arnold said. “Although there was all that brain down there, yet everyone was given a chance to express his opinion. There was no argument between experts and the lower deck. It just began as a talk and everyone joined in. All suggestions were studied. It was decided that LieutenantCommander Oram and Lieutenant Woods should try to get out. They went into the chamber and went away. Then Mr Shaw and I decided to make a bid. We felt sure that all would follow. I cannot say how I felt when they did not do so,” Stoker Arnold said. Everyone, officers, men and civilians were the same down below. There could not be a finer crowd anywhere. When told that Mr Shaw credited him with saving his life, Stoker Arnold replied: “I instructed him. I did my duty, the same as everyone would have done.”

Asked about the condition of the air, Stoker Arnold said it was indescribable. He added that there were lights in the Thetis until the time he left.