Castaway in Society Group
p. 34 · Read in the full issue
Causes Stir in Sydney
t’XCITEMENT was caused in Sydney in July when Mrs. C. T. P. Ulm. wife of the Australian airman who disappeared in 1934 while on a flight from California to Honolulu, announced that she believed the castaway seen in the Society Group by the Port Darvnn was her husband.
Captain Hudson, of the Port Darvnn. was immediately interviewed again, and re-told his story. He said that when the vessel was passing Motu Iti he noticed smoke coming from the island. Through glasses he saw a man waving his arms and piling brushwood on a fire to create more smoke. The weather was too unfav ourable to lower a boat, so he sent a wire less message to Tahiti.
The Australian newspapers seized upon Mrs. Ulm’s statement and gave it full prominence. For a week people were per suaded that Charles Ulm might be alive and a castaway on an uninhabited island in the Pacific.
The demand for information became so clamant that the Federal Government took a hand. Official cables were des patched to Papeete to find out if any at tempt had been made to rescue the man on Motu Iti. A reply came back that the island was at present inhabited by a group of Tahitians who were working for the lessee. The message stated that the concessionaire would visit the place at the end of July, Mr. W. M. Reid, Sydney exporter, who knows the Society Group well, expressed the opinion that if the person were delib erately signalling the ship, he was pro bably a native from nearby Bora Bora who has lost his canoe.
Gradually the stir subsided, and finally died out when a further perusal was made of the reports from Honolulu at the time when Ulm was lost.
The aviator’s last message flashed from the ’plane as the Star of Australia was going down, into the sea was that he was within 300 miles of the Hawaiian Group.
In view of this, if was fantastic to believe that the ’plane, even if it had floated, would have carried Ulm and the crew 2300 miles due south to the Society Group.