TWENTY DROWNED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 November 1939, Page 6

TWENTY DROWNED

DISASTER TO BRITISH PILOT BOAT DRIVEN ASHORE IN MERSEY. RESCUE EFFORTS HAMPERED. By Telegraph-Press Association— Copyright. (Received This Day, 12.40 p.m.) LONDON, November 26. Twenty persons were drowned, including • Captain McLeod and a majority of the apprentices, when the Liverpool No. 1 pilot boat was driven aground in the Mersey near Southport. Four men swam ashore and six others lashed themselves to the rigging, and held on with icecold seas beating over them, for 10 hours before the Blackpool lifeboat rescued them, after the raging waves had driven off four other lifeboats. Spectators on the Ainsdale shore at Southport could see six men in the crow’s nest waving to them. A longshore watchman saw distress flares at 4.30 a.m. and telephoned to Liverpool. Wallasey and New Brighton but the Brighton lifeboat's arrival was belated, while the Blackpool, Lytham and Saint Anne's lifeboats were at sea. Policemen and Air Raid Precaution workers, as dawn broke, saw the pilot boat, with its deck awash, half a mile from the shore. She had grounded 500 yards from the coast. The police formed a line, hand-in-hand, wading waist-deep into the sea, but they tailed to reach the survivors. Boy Scouts assisted in signalling two boats from Ainsdale. They capsized in attempting a rescue, but the shallow water saved the occupants.