The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-04-10

Be German, BuC Fly1Hg
 sss.ls Swedish Flag, Is Over
 dauled By Destroyer Near
 The English Coast.
 New York, April 10-How an inno. cent looking tramp steamship flying the Swedish flag strewed nearly one hundred mines in the path of the steamship St. Louis, of the American line, as she was approaching the Eng 1ish coast on her eastward voyage, was told yesterday on the return of the St. Louis.
 The St. Louis is the first, armed American passenger vessel to have made the voyage to Europe and back since the relations with Germany were broken. A passenger who was on board the vessel going east and re. turning and who received the story about the mines from two British of- 0cers said that none of the passengers on board the St. Louis had the remot- est suspicion of the danger which lay i ahead of her as she zigzagged through the waters in the vicinity of the Eng
 
 26.
 It was rumored that the captain and seventeen of the crew of the mine strewer paid with their lives for the thoroughness with which. they had carried out their work. According to one report, they were taken to Birk- enhead and shot, the passenger was told. The officers said the tramp steamship had been observed at an- chor the night before the arrival of the St. Louis. She looked like scores of other vessels of the kind, and no particular attention was paid to her un- til early on the morning of March 26. She had weighed anchor, and was vending her way westward, going at an unusually leisurely rate, sO much as to arouse interest. This interest be- came Intensified when a patrol boat saw mine floating in in the wake of the tramp. Mine sweepers were inn ! mediately despatced, and within few hours eight-two mines were picked up or destroyed by gunfire from patrol boats.
 ssNatmally the tramp steamship, in the wake of which so long and wide a swath of potential destruction was floating about, became an object of conjecture,'' 7 said the passenger, and she was soon overtalxen by a destroy CT. The captain of the tramp told the captain of the destroyer that he was carrying Q cargo of salt fish toA Car- ,diff, Wales. A boarding crew from the war ship was quickly at work on q lot of hogsheads on the tramp's deck. '.rhe fish is stored in those hogs heads,y said the captain. But when he saw one of the men approach a hogshead, with a view to fammering In atz lid with an axe, he yelled, For heavens sake, don't do that; you'll blow up the ship and all of us!'
 The hogshead contained. a fine as- eortment of made in Germany mines, such as had been found floating about
 The st. Louis. of course, had been warned by wireless as soon as it had become, apparent that the waters thereabouts had been mined, obviously in anticipation of her arrival, and the result of the sweeping process also was con1nunscated to her, advising her that all danger had been removed out of her path. Nevertheless, two of the mines appear to have escaped the vigilance of the sweepers and patrol boats, for scarcely more than an hour after, the St. Louis had crossed the bar and gone up the narrow channel, the Kefv4nhead, a British steamship Of 2.990 tons, in crossing the same bar struck one of the mines and was blown up. 1t was estimated that the St. Louis must have passed within 20 feet of this particular mine
 The British authorities did not give out any information, but some how the narrow escape of the St. Louis became a matter of common talk around the docks, and with it went the belief that the tramp which had displayed the Swedish flag was in reality German vessel masquerad- ing under the Swedish emblem"
 From others it was learned that when the St. Louis was still an entire days distance from the Irish coast her wireless caugut IS O s. calls from vessels which were being attack ed by submarines. One steamship was torpedoed seventy-five miles ahead of the St. Louis, and directly in her path. Afterward another "S O g. told of the similar fate of an other steamship one hundred miles to the south. And still another vessel was destroyed far to the westward of where the St. Louis was running aCcOIQl1S LO d tllTu AWlTGlcSS call IOI help. The third vessel was outside the limit of the submarine zone, il was said. and was at a point which the St. Louis had traversed several hours before.
 When the St. Louis arrived at her destination the British expressed boundIess joy. They cheered, and many officers declared that any vessel armed like the St. Louis need have no fear of molestation from a subma- rine. When somebody preached the subject of a convoy for the big Amer. ican vessel, the British naval office, spoken to said that 1t would be all most as insulting to offer her a con. voy as it would be to offer one to a cruiser.
 Te homeward voyage of the St Louis was without incident, as far as hostile craft or mines were concerned but there was a terrific storm off the coast of Ireland, and the vessel had to lie to for several hours to afford an opportunity to secure more firmly some of the lifeboats which had been lowered and lashed to. the rail. IT their lowered positions these lifeboat. were threatened with destruction by the tr9mendous seas which swept oye,