SUNK BY SUBMARINE

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20995, 23 December 1939, Page 10

SUNK BY SUBMARINE

ADRIFT IN LEAKING BOAT TRAWLER CREW’S ORDEAL 32 HOURS ON OPEN SEA (Times Air Mail Service) LONDON, Nov. 27 Two men keeping their feet over a hole in their badly leaking boat . . . . another with his right arm paralysed with baling out water throughout the night, says the Daily Sketch. This story of a trawler crew’s Atlantic ordeal after their vessel had been sunk by a U-boat was told yesterday when the 13 survivors of the Fleetwood trawler Delphine arrived at a town in Northern Ireland. It was stormy and squally when their boat was taking off from the sinking trawler, and it was damaged. They tried to stuff the hole in the bottom with grease, but it was no use, and two of them, the Chief Engineer, Charles Ashworth, and Fred Chilvers, the boatswain, stood with their feet over the hole throughout the night, and the mate, Ronald Heather, had his arm paralysed baling out the water. The crew were on the open sea for 22 hours and the skipper steered by dead reckoning until dawn. Fred Hylton, the cook, a cousin of Jack Hylton, the band leader, said that he had been 17 years trawling. Ashworth had been in the Rudyard Kipling, another trawler which was sunk earlier in the war.