CASUALTIES.
Two cyclists came to grief yesterday, one of them sustaining very severe injuries. The first accident occurred in the morning, when George Cullings, a young man, who was riding down Lookout Point, came into collision with a trap through his machine taking control of him. Cullings was thrown under the horse’s feet, but fortunately neither the animal nor the vehicle went over him. Mr J. Downes, of the St. John Ambulance Society, who was on his way to Outram at the time, attended to Callings, who had the skin taken off the palm of one band and knee, Mr Downes accompanied the injured man to town, and took him to his home, where he properly dressed his wounds. Strangely enough, Mr Downes's services were again requisitioned in the afternoon, when a lad named Arthur Steers was found with a deep cut in his head. Steers was riding into town on a bicycle without a brake attached, and when opposite Hangman’s Gully, between the Upper Junction and North-east Valley, his machine got beyond him, with the result that he crashed into the rocky face below the gully. Mr Downes rendered first aid, and then took the boy to his home, where he dressed the wound — a fracture of the skull — and had him removed to the hospital, where the operation of trepanning was performed. The patient regained consciousness, but is still in a somewhat critical condition. -Evening Star, 30/3/1903.
Arthur Steers, who was, thrown from his bicycle on the North-East Valley road on Sunday, is making satisfactory progress. -Otago Daily Times, 31/3/1903.
PERSONAL.
Mr G. H. Beilby, at present sole teacher at Katea, has been appointed third assistant at the Green Island School. Mr Arthur Steers, son of Mr R. Steers of Normanby, has, according to advice just received from London, passed his examination for extra chief engineer. Mr Steers served part of his apprenticeship with Messrs A. and T. Burt. and also with Messrs Gardner and Co., Port Chalmers. -Otago Daily Times, 30/3/1915.
A TWO-MILE SWIM
TO ESCAPE FROM RAIDER.
AMONGST SHARKS
A DUNEDIN MAN DID IT.
Mr T. E. Rees, second officer of the Wairuna, tells a great story in the 'Weekly Dispatch': —
About nine months ago, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I became a prisoner of war in German hands. We were close upon 600 miles from Auckland and off Sunday Island, when a seaplane from the raider Wolf flew just above the topmast of our ship, the s.s. Wairuna, and dropped on the forecastle head a bag with a red flag, containing a message which said: "Stop immediately. Take your orders from the German cruiser. Do not use your wireless or I will bomb you."
After the seaplane had exploded a bomb ahead of us we decided to obey the German orders, and the big cruiser came, up and took us on board. As we came on deck the crew of Germans gave us a salute, which we returned. We told them we were bound for the country of their now enemy — America.
"Why did America declare war?" asked one of the officers. "She is very foolish."
I replied "Not arf." This expression seemed to puzzle him very much, and I was at pains to explain. The ship's doctor inquired if there was any sickness, and then we were invited to a bath, and presented with a big handful of strong soft soap and a tub of fresh water. While we were washing ourselves, a German officer named Von Osward, whom we christened "Little Willie" and "the beautiful Hun," on account of his resemblance to the Crown Prince, told us the war would soon be over, and England would be starving in three months. We replied that things were not nearly so bad as in Germany.
A mine officer named Dieterich told us that we would be well treated, and that we must not believe the stories about German atrocities in the English papers. But, I of course, we knew very well that the reason why they were a little considerate was that at any time a British cruiser might come along and the position be reversed.
The constant fear of the British Navy haunted these Germans day and night, there was nothing sporting about their conduct. The captain was a typical Hun, surly, and continually bullying his officers and men. He scarcely ever seemed to take his eyes off the deck, and never spoke a civil word to anyone. He would hurl insults at an officer in front of anybody, and seemed to have no gentlemanly instincts. He would never attempt to stop anything but the most inoffensive little ships that were likely to be unarmed. He sank a little French schooner one day, and I remember he turned quite, white and trembled when he discovered that this craft had two guns on board. Like the rest, of the crew, he spoke very good English until he got excited, and then his language was quaint.
Two of our comrades, the chief officer, Mr Cleland, and the second engineer, Mr Steers, of the s.s. Turritella, escaped one night to a little island, and were never recaptured. it was a very plucky venture, for we were two miles from the shore, and there were quite a number of sharks about, some of which we had caught only the day before. They escaped just before we were sent below, they had fishing lines wound round them, a bottle each full of matches, fish hooks made out of nails, a knife, and one of the lifebelts, which they inflated when they got into the water. They got over the poop before dark, and intended waiting in the water close to the rudder until darkness, and then beat off for the island. They were going to keep together as long as possible, so that they could make a combined defence if attacked by sharks. If one man failed the other was to go on. We never saw them again, and the few of us who knew felt their absence very much, for they were fine fellows and game enough for anything. The Huns did not miss them until a long while afterwards. They did not know about it when they sent a lifeboat off with a squad to have a look at a hut there. They could not beach the boat, and one man had swim through the surf with a line and he pulled in a raft. They brought back four sacks full of oranges, pineapples, and bananas. With fruit and fish to live on, our comrades, if they got ashore safely, must be living the life of Robinson Crusoe, for the island was apparently uninhabited. Eventually all hands were mustered, and then the huns found out that the two were gone, Little Willie went white with rage, or it may have been fear of having to face his commander. "You answer me," he shouted to us. "These men escape. Where? What time? You understand; yes. Stop us you are stand." then he went to try to explain to his terrible captain, nicknamed "Almighty Joe." He returned in an hour to say that we should no longer be treated as gentlemen, and that we would be mustered four times daily, allowed on deck only an hour a day for 28 days, and to buy no more than one bottle of beer a month.
The most serious punishment was the confinement in the hold of the ship 23 hours out of the 24, together with the prisoners from the other British ships that had been captured. Altogether, there were between 200 and 300 of us.
There was a Dane who happened to be in Germany when war broke out, and was collared for service. All the same, he was very independent, and would not put up with the discipline like the rest of them. He dressed himself in a frock coat and a dilapidated tall hat, and amused himself very much.
Our ship was sunk after she had gallantly resisted bombs and a tremendous lot of gunfire. The other prisoners on board told us that the Wolf had been sailing for two months without seeing a ship, and that they were making for the Kermadec Isles for overhauling and cleaning when they suddenly saw us. It was a great surprise. The prisoners were all on the poop, and the German band was paying the usual ''Germany over all" business. Each player in turn stopped playing as his eyes saw us, the drummer being the last, and banging away for some time after the others had cleared off.
I asked Dieterich what they would do with us it they went into action with a British or any other cruiser. He said that we should have to remain below and take the same chance as the German crew. I told him we should have no chance for anything below decks, and that if we were wounded there was nothing to use for bandages, and that we had the magazine on one side of us and about 200 mines on the other, his answer was that this was war, and that the British treated their prisoners badly, too, and that one of their submarine commanders had to walk through the streets of London with no boots and very little else on.
Whenever there was a hint of a warship about we were hurried below, the hatches were battened down, and we could hear the movement of the guns and the torpedo tubes. All the lights were put out, the alarm bells sounded, there was much shouting and excitement, and everyone put on a lifebelt. This sort of thing happened when we were close to the Australian coast.
We lay flat on our stomachs and on top of each other, expecting any moment to hear an explosion; but nothing happened. The Germans had had a great fright, and the next day the captain's voice trembled as he spoke. "W-w-we're-n-n-not out of d-d-danger y-y-yet," he said. In these hours of crisis the Germans would become almost benevolent towards us, but this manner would wear off as soon as they felt safe.
It was a curious crew. There were not more than a dozen real sailors among the lot of them, and we used to laugh at their amateurish way of doing things. In talks with those men I learned that several of the real sailors had been officers on merchantmen before the war; but in Germany, it seems, only the sons of the aristocracy and the professional classes can have commissions.
I was told that at the beginning of the war the captain of the Imperator, one of the largest liners afloat, was called up as an ordinary seaman, and that on his identity being disclosed through a medal he was wearing, which was given him by the Kaiser, he was made a petty officer. There was a sailor who said he had a brother living in London. "Behind barbed wire, I suppose," I said. "Oh, no," he said; "he's a merchant, and has become a naturalised British subject." One of the officers informed me that he was a member of the Richmond Tennis Club.
One day we sighted the American barque Beluga, and as wo approached we could see a little girl on the poop waving a handkerchief to us. We thought they would be left alone; but no, our Hun captain sent a prize crew to sink her, and the American captain and his wife and child were made prisoners. They were allowed to live in a cabin amidships. The neutral seamen in this ship, as well as those who were in an American schooner that was sunk, received exactly the same treatment as we did.
The Huns did a good deal of mine-laying, and during these operations we were kept down in the hold. Little Willie, seeing one of our men awake, told him to go to sleep. "How do you expect me to go to sleep when you are laying mines at the door of my home?" he said. He explained that he lived outside Wellington — the Cook Strait.
On the voyage home I was taken ill, and was put on board a Spanish steamer which had a German prize crew, and for three mouths suffered for want of medicine and proper medical attention. During the journey across the Atlantic the Germans had very cold feet indeed, but they got more confident when they neared Iceland without mishap.
We made several attempts before we got through to get round the north of the island, where the ice was very thick and the cold intense. Then we reached what they called the first blockade, and they were all on the quake; but we on the Spanish steamer managed to get through without being challenged. We were off the coast of Denmark when we were wrecked, and saved by Danish sailors. Five minutes later and we should have been in the Cattegat and in German waters, and I should have been a prisoner of war in Germany to-day.
The Mr Arthur Steers mentioned above was born at Green Island, educated at the Valley School, served his apprenticeship at A. and T. Burt's and Messrs Gardner and Co.'s, Port Chalmers. His mother and father are living at Normanby, North-east Valley. He studied with Mr McLintock, and passed his examination, and left New Zealand as engineer in Shaw Savill's boat Marima. After several voyages in her he joined the Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company, and traded between Singapore, and Britain carrying oil for the British Navy. -Evening Star, 12/8/1918.
When Second Engineer Arthur Steers and First Officer Cleland had been aided by their fellow prisoners on board the German raider Wolf to pass down the vessel's side to enable them to hide under the counter till darkness set in, and they could start their perilous swim to shore, they completely passed out of the ken of their follow men. How the two gallant sea-men spent the tedious hours waiting for the time when they could slip into the water will apparently never be known. It was early in June, 1917, that the escape took place; but it is only now that it is definitely known that the search of Sunday Island and other islands in the Kermadec group by a Government steamer proved resultless. No trace that the men had even landed could be found. As a matter of fact, it was not till many months after that it was known that the Wolf had been at the Kermadecs and had met and sunk the Wairuna. Both the officers were on the Turritella, an oil cargo boat, which was acting as a supply ship for the British navy, and which had captured by the Wolf some time before the Wairuna fell into the raider's clutches early in June, 1917, when the Union Steam Ship Company's vessel was steaming past the Kermadecs. Mr Steers was the second son of Mr and Mrs Steers, of Antrim street. North-East Valley. Another son is fighting in France. The former was born at Green Island 29 years ago, was educated at the Leith Valley School, served three years at Messrs A. and T. Burt's, and commenced his trade at Messrs Gardner's, Port Chalmers. He then went Home, and quickly gained distinction by obtaining his extra chief engineer's certificate. Mr Cleland was the only support of his widowed mother, who lives at Limerick, Ireland. Both men willingly gave their lives in a gallant venture. They knew the perils which beset them — they must have become very cold before the time of their plunge into the ocean arrived. It was said that the place was infested with sharks, and yet their courage never faltered. It was not so much with the object of gaining their personal liberty that they decided on their gallant enterprise: their first intention was to endeavour to send a warning, if possible, that a raider was at large, that she had laid many mines, and, in fact, to serve their country. The words in the last diary of Captain Scott, the polar explorer, when referring to his comrade Captain Oates's sacrifice, would well apply to these two mariners: "Thus died two gallant gentlemen." -Otago Daily Times, 23/8/1918.
A DUNEDIN MAN’S SACRIFICE
ARTHUR STEERS
(Contributed.) Those among us whose memory interest carries back to the events of the war will remember something of the doings of the German warship the Wolf, generally spoken as the raider Wolf. The work of this warship was largely shrouded in mystery; though having the main ocean trading routes open to her attack, her destructive work in this line was comparatively unimportant. Indeed, her chief concern seemed to be to keep her whereabouts secret; when she did meet with a British ship all on board were taken prisoners, the ship sunk, and the Wolf went on her way.
The puzzle of her mission has at last been fully solved by Mr N. A. Pyne, Collector of Customs at Haapai, Tonga, in a letter to the ‘New Zealand Herald’ of April 21. Interest in this matter is intensified by the fact, Mr Pyne’s narrative sates, that when the prisoners on board learned of the true nature of the Wolf’s work the performers of brave deeds in order to make the true facts known included several New Zealanders, among whom Arthur Steers, a Dunedin young man, occupies a chief place. After narrating the attempts of Captain Medows to convey the information by means of bottles dropped secretly into the ocean, Mr Pyne’s narrative proceeds as follows: -
‘‘Two of Captain Medow’s officers gallantly gave their lives in a desperate attempt to escape during the time the Wolf was anchored off Sunday Island, in the Kermadecs. She anchored there for six weeks in June and July, 1917, being laden with mines, which she eventually laid in New Zealand and Australian waters and at Singapore. Shark fishing was a very popular pastime with the Germans, huge sharks being very plentiful there. Undeterred by this fact, Chief Officer Clelland and Second Engineer Steers planned to swim ashore at night, hide on the island until the raider had sailed away, and then signal a passing ship and so let the authorities know that a heavily armed German raider, and minelayer was at large.
“The two officers managed one day to conceal themselves on deck before all prisoners were ordered below decks for the night. They then let themselves down a stout shark line, which had been left hanging over the stern of the vessel, and were successful in swimming away from the Wolf unobserved by any of the numerous sentries.
“Their fellow-prisoners knew of the escape of the two officers, and it became their mam concern to keep the Germans innocent for as long as possible. It was realised that if the Germans became aware of the escape while the raider was anywhere in the vicinity of the Kermadecs a desperate endeavour would be made to recapture the missing men. This would prevent any information about the Wolf and her doings from reaching the British naval authorities. There was a crew of 350 German sailors, so numerous search parties would have been available for the purpose of thoroughly combing Sunday Island. However, by answering for the escaped men when their names were called at roll call each day the prisoners managed to keep the Germans unaware of the escape until three weeks later by which time the Wolf was too far from the Kermadecs to return and search for the men.
“Unfortunately the two officers were never heard of again. There was a strong current running, they had over a mile to swim, a nasty surf was breaking on the shore, and, as previously mentioned, sharks were very numerous When the Germans eventually discovered the two prisoners were missing they were furious, and tried to find out who had been answering their names at roll call. As they failed all prisoners were punished by being confined to the holds for twenty-one days. During this time the prisoners suffered greatly, as the ship was then well into the tropics, and, owing to lack of ventilation, the heat in the steel ’tween decks was almost unbearable. The German officer in charge of the prisoners was sentenced to seven days in confinement for neglect of duty in not discovering the escape before he did.
“Perhaps,” writes Mr Pyne, “a tablet will be placed on Sunday Island some day to record the gallant attempt and the sacrifice made by these two gentlemen.”
The following particulars have been supplied by a brother, Mr H. Steers, of the head railway office, Wellington — Mr Arthur Steers was the son of Mr and Mrs B. Steers, and was born at Green Island in 1888. He was educated at the Leith Valley School, served an apprenticeship for three years with Messrs A. and T. Burt, and completed his trade at Messrs Gardners’, Port Chalmers. He left New Zealand for England as sixth engineer of the s.s Rangatira in May. 1910. At the time of his capture he was serving as second engineer on the Turritella, which was acting as a supply ship to the British Navy. Also his name appears on the memorial arch at North-east Valley School as H. S. A. Steers.
It is evident from the narrative that the importance of taking advantage of the opportunity offered of conveying to the British naval authorities the information that the purpose of the Wolf was not raiding, but minelaying, was a matter of common concern among the prisoners on board, but who would venture the errand? Arthur steers was born, reared, educated, and trained in and about Dunedin. In company with another he paid the forfeit of his life in a desperate attempt to serve the world’s and the Empire’s cause and to defend the shores of his own native land. -Evening Star, 8/5/1930.
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