GALLANT DEEDS

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 151, 23 December 1929, Page 13

GALLANT DEEDS

WRECK OF NORWICH CITY

ELLIS ISLAND NATIVES

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

AUCKLAND, This Day.

Magnificent rescue work carried out by a party of Ellis Islanders in connection with the wreck of the Norwich City in the Phoenix Group on 30th November, is reported by passengers from Apia who arrived at Auckland by the Tofua.yesterday.These "boys" were rewarded with £5 each, and the Administrator of Samoa, Colonel Allen, has forwarded a recommendation for recognition of their bravery by the Royal Humane Society. Huge waves were breaking over the reef surrounding the island, and sharks infested the waters both inside and outside the reef. With wonderful skill tho natives took their surf boat over the reef, carrying provisions to the marooned seamen. Then they achieved the even more difficult feat of returning with three of the castaways. The boat reached the shore again later, but the conditions were so bad that it was considered too risky to attempt the carriage of more passengers through the raging surf. The natives, however, took their boat out again, bearing a message from the captain of the Norwich City. As a result of this a wireless call was sent out for despatch to the scene of a warship equipped with a seaplane, which could alight inside the reef, and so provide transport between the shore and the . rescue steamers for the remainder of the survivors.

The native surf-boatmen searched along the reef and found a spot which offered rather easier conditions than that first used, and within an hour their skill had been used to such good effect that all the survivors had been transferred from the shore through the raging surf to a launch from the steamer Lincoln Ellsworth. Eight wiuto men and four Arabs from the Norwich City wero taken to Apia on the Trongate, and two of the Arabs went into hospital there. The white men afterwards sailed for England on tho Clan Graham.