TERRIFIC HURRICANE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 January 1943, Page 3

TERRIFIC HURRICANE

WORST IN LIVING MEMORY LARGE ATLANTIC CONVOY SCATTERED. BUT ALL SHIPS REACH PORT. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright; (Received This Day, 11.50 a.m.) LONDON, January 29. It can now be revealed that the worst hurricane in living memory lashed the Atlantic on December 15 and 16, from Newfoundland to * 1,000 miles south cf Portugal. Mountainous seas scattered a large convoy, but all the ships eventually made port. Ono escort ship, after burning mess tables and wardroom furniture, stopped fef? kick of fuel and had to be towed 200 miles. A corvette made port listing twenty degrees, as a result of 200 tons of ice forming on her weather side. A destroyer from which the wind tore a funnel reached port with fuel for only another five hours’ steaming. A corvette's coxswain summed up the weather when he reported to his captain on the second morning: “It’s eased down to a gale, sir.” The captain of a corvette said: “Our convoy of more than forty ships just disappeared during the night. We set out to round them up, but steamed for 24 hours without sighting one.”