Chrome Freighter Wrecked Near
p. 36 · Read in the full issue
New Caledonia
LOADED with 6,000 tons of New Cale donian chrome for Germany, the Greek freighter “Fontini Carras” struck an apparently uncharted reef and was wrecked on June 7, when 250 miles west of N.C. Captain Pantelides and the crew of 27 were rescued by the Danish vessel “Australien”, after rowing 25 miles in the lifeboats. The ship-wrecked men were subsequently transferred to the E. and A. liner “Tanda” near Rabaul, N.G.. and brought to Sydney.
The cook of the “Fontini Carras”, Angelus Ponticus, is used to being wrecked. In 1923 his ship caught fire off Samoa and was abandoned. Twice later, off the Irish coast and outside Gibraltar, he had to take to the lifeboats. In 1935, he spent three days wrecked off a lonely part of the New Caledonian coast.
Ceylon is to try to develop an export trade in brown paper made from coconut husks. Good white paper, it has been found, can also be made out of husks, but its manufacture is not economical.
The bleaching of the husk fibres for this purpose raises the production cost exces sively. But brown paper can be made at an economical cost. (From Supplement to the British Trade Journal and Export World, October, 1938.)