MURDER TACTICS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 November 1939, Page 5

MURDER TACTICS

GERMAN MINES IN NORTH SEA NUMBER OF SHIPS LOST. NEUTRALS SUFFER HEAVILY. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. LONDON. November 20. - Five neutral ships and one British ship have been sunk by German mines since Saturday, five of the sinkings occurring off the east coast of Britain. The Swedish steamer B. O. Borjesson (1590 tons).-the British ship Black Hill 12500 tons), the Italian ship Grazia (5857 tons) and the Yugoslav ship Carica Milica (6371 tons.) all struck mines off the east coast in circumstances similar to the loss of the Netherlands liner Simon Bolivar. “The Times” says that five were killed in the Grazia, which sank in a few minutes seven miles off the coast. Two ships rescued 29 members of the crew. A search by lifeboat and plane for further survivors proved fruitless. All 26 of the Carica Milica’s crew escaped. Thirteen survivors from the B. O. Borjesson were landed, of whom eight were injured. They had been on a raft for three hours before they were picked up by a trawler. Six are believed to have perished. Twenty-two members of the crew from the Black Hill, including the captain, were landed. The Brussels correspondent of the Exchange Telegraph Company says weekend gales washed up 11 mines on the Belgian coast. One exploded near a breakwater at Breedene. shattering the windows of a military hospital three miles away. EXTENDING TOLL LOSSES IN THE NORTH SEA. TRAWLER CREW BELIEVED TO HAVE PERISHED. (Received This Day. 9.10 a.m.) LONDON. November 20. The Simon Bolivar’s latest list is 400 aboard, of whom there are 262 survivors. • Eight persons are dead and 130 missing. The Grazia survivors now total 26. The steamer Pensilva has been sunk by enemy action. The crew was saved. The collier Torchbearer was sunk by a mine on the East Coast at the weekend, making the Nazi toll seven ships. Nine members of the crew are missing. The captain and three members of the crew, who were seriously injured, were put ashore at an English port and taken to hospital. The trawler Wigmore has been lost in the North Sea and it is feared that the crew of sixteen have perished. The Wigmore was sunk by a mine. The Lisbon correspondent of the Associated Press of America states that passengers on the Netherlands liners Oranje Jan Pieterszoon and Johan DeWitt, en route to Holland, were told to disembark owing to increasing danger in the North Sea. SEAMEN RESCUED NUMBER DROWNED OR INJURED. (Received This Day. 11.10 a.m.) LONDON, November 20. Sixteen of 33 members of the crew of a steamer sunk in the North Sea were landed at a British port from a Danish fishing boat. The ship sank so quickly that there was no time to launch boats. An explosion is believed to have killed an engineer and fireman. The Torchbearer had a crew of seventeen of whom thirteen were saved and four are missing. Six of those rescued were injured.