Quick translation of the newspaper article:
District of CHERBOURG
The shipwreck of the steamer ‘Guernsey’. - Before his repatriation to Southampton, we were able to obtain from Mr. Ellison Colin, chief officer and survivor of the steamer ‘Guernsey’, the following information relating to the circumstances of the shipwreck.
On April 9th, around 10 o’clock, Mr. Ellison declared, 'I was lying in my cabin when a violent shock threw me from my bed. Immediately, I went up on deck and, addressing the captain who was on watch, asked: ‘What’s happening?’ The captain responded with another question: ‘Where are we?’ To which I replied, ‘We are off Cape La Hague!’
The ship, at the moment of the violent shock that I had felt, had just struck a rock and began to drift 15 minutes later. Seeing this, the crewmen and I put a boat into the sea; it was not possible to think of launching others because the ship was listing heavily to port. Some of the crew, unable to make out their number due to the darkness, climbed into this boat, and I myself, after having recommended the men to equip themselves with life belts. At that moment, the ‘Guernsey’ was sinking beneath my feet.
In this boat, which was rather adrift, we ended up in a bay on the coast, and that’s when I counted that we were 12 out of 19 crew members. Captain Berrow, an officer, and five men had disappeared.
The ‘Guernsey’ had a cargo of early fruit and vegetables bound for Southampton; we had left Guernsey at 7 o’clock in the evening, and the ship was lost exactly at 10:11 p.m.
In this shipwreck, Mr. Ellison tells us, seven men perished, they are:
Captain Berrow, Charles; the second officer Mundey, Charles; the cook William Veaver; the stokers Lievis, John and Bisson, John; the sailor Etheridge, Alexander; and the stoker Max, Allen. The latter two, aged respectively 65 and 63 years old, were natives of Southampton. Their bodies were cast up by the sea on Saturday; one landed at the port of Goury and the other at the place known as Giletain, on the coast of St-Germain-des-Vaux.
The coastguard at Auderville, Mr. Kersual, declared to the Maritime Authority that he was awakened on Saturday, around 1 o’clock in the morning, by the survivors of the ‘Guernsey’ which had just sunk on the rocks of La Foraine. He immediately set about restoring them, warming them by providing dry clothes, and made the necessary arrangements for their repatriation to Cherbourg, which took place through the efforts of Mr. Cottel, maritime agent, representative of the South-Western-Railways Company to which the ‘Guernsey’ belonged.
On his part, Mr. Guilloux, Omonville Seamen’s Union, ordered the lifeboat to set out, but after several hours of exploration, it returned to port without having found any trace of the sunken steamer, which, as it was said, sank about 30 metres deep.
The violence of the currents that prevail in that place leaves little hope of finding traces of the wreck of the steamer. It is in these waters, if one remembers, that the submarine ‘Vendémiaire’ perished with all hands, two years ago on June 8th.
Journal de la Manche et de la Basse-Normandie
17 April 1915
Page 3
