Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1910-10-21
WELLMAN IS SAFE.
DARING NAVIGATORS OF THE
AMERICA, IN PERIL, RES
CUED BY STEAMSHIP.
AIRCRAFT ASKS FOR HELP
Passing Mailship Trent Sends Life
Boat to Pick Up Air Men, Who
Drop in Their Boat to Sea, While
Big Gas Bag Goes Off.

New York-Walter Wellman and
the crew of five men in the dirig-
ible airship America, which started
from Atlantic City, were found in
distress and picked up at sea 375
miles off the North Carolina coast by
the Royal Mail steamship Trent.
When the America was sighted
shortly before 5 o'clock in the morn
ing, hundreds of miles outside of her
course, she was lowering near the
water with her crew in the gondola,
Jack Irwin, the wireless operator,
was at his post in the life boat sus-
pended below the gondola, but evil
IDENTIFY tired of calling for relief,
after having been forty-eight hours
out of touch with land or steamer,
even by the magic of his wireless,
and had ceased to work the instru-
ments, saving the precious store IN
his batteries for the last &c. q. ID.
Thus it was that the Trent, by
good fortune travelling far Off the
track of other liners or coasting
vessels, sighted the big airship ana
signalled her before the exhausted
and practically hopeless Wellman
and his crew knew that succor was
at hand.
Jack Irwin lost no time in respond
ing to the wireless call from OPP
orator Louis Ginsberg of the Trent
and replied that the airship was in
distress and that the crew wished
to abandon it.
Then followed the strangest ana
most dramatic scene ever witnessed
on the seas, that of steamship,
talking with the aid of the wireless
to an airship and trying to rescue
the crew of her sister vessel OF the
air, after the fashion of taking
aboard the crew of a vessel OF the
water in distress.
The Trent following at top speed
the will O. the wisp movements OF
the big aerial craft tried to get a
line aboard the America or get a
line from her This was found fu-
tile.
After a council aboard the air.
ship, the crew resolved rpon the last
resort and took their places in the
life boat. Capt Downs of the Trent
ordered one of his life boats over the
side and with men straining at the
oars, the buoyant craft leaped over
the boisterous waves in pursuit or
the tragically playful gas bag.
Finally, when the airship dipped
near the water, Jack Irwin, trained
for the task, cut loose the lifeboat,
which dropped safely to the waves.
Irwin and Engineer Loud were
slightly injured by the trailing equi-
librator, the supposed safeguard de-
vised by Wellman, but the undo1ng
of the airship.
Released from the weight of the
lifeboat and it's crew, the giant air.
ship shot upward and was driven
away by the wind, perhaps to keep
afloat for days or weeks, or to end
it's unhappy and expensive career by
a dive into the sea.
The men who sailed in the airship
and who were rescued by the Trent,
we're:
Walter Wellman, head of the ex-
petition; Melvin Vaniman, engineer;
J. Murray Simon, navigator ana
pilot; J. K Irwin, wireless operator;
Albert Louis Loud, first assistant en-
gineer, and John ALBERT, second as
sistant engineer A cat, taken along
as a mascot, was also rescued and
was mentioned by Capt. Downs in
his first message as among the lives
saved.