The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-11-16
Vessel Leaking as She
Left Port
Heroic Negro Worker
Saves 20 Lives

lOAIkSl viz NJ AllAAAAttA
negligence and incompetence
with which the death-voyage
of the Vestris had been man
aged, fifty-seven of the crew
and passengers of the lost vessel
arrived in New York on the French
tanker Miriam" yesterday.
Charges further incriminating
the Lamport and Holt Company
came quickly as the crippled crew
arrived.
"The whole trouble was that the
coal port on the starboard side"
said Evans Hampden, Negro fire
man aboard the Vestris, (which
was four feet above the water line,
was not entirely closed when we
left port, and couldn't be closed and
locked, and the water poured thru
it in the first heavy sea.@ With the
ocean coming in they sent down
bedroom stewards to bail it out
with buckets"
Stokers Tied in Hold.
Continuing. his story, Hampden
said that the stokers had been tied
together in the hold, working fren-
ziedly to keep the ship af1oat. With
each wave the danger of their go
ing down increased. But when the
life-boats were lowered from the
deck, no word was passed to the
workers in the hold. "They COM
pletely ignored u.s." the workers
charged, "leaving us to drown in the
flooded stockhold like rats"
For hours the stokers, all Ne
groes, had worked in the hold in
water that splashed around their
naked chests, going over their heads
at times when sea-swells rolled the
Vestris. But when the orders to
lower the lifeboats and leave the
sinking vessel were given up on
deck, they were left to die in the
hold.
Bravery OF Negro Worker.
Stories of the bravery of the
crew in the face of danger were told
by the passengers, giving the lie
completely to previous rumors
against the workers. One of the
rescued women, Mrs. Cline Slaugh-
ter, told how Lester Watson, of the
crew of the Vestris, had kept her
head above water for hours while
she was afloat, unconscious in a
life-jacket. And all the while six
of his. ribs had been crushed in.
Many of the slanderous under
hand accusations levelled against
the Negro workers on the Vestris
when the first reports of the dis
aster simmered in through the capi-
talist press were shown to be bare
faced lies. One Negro worker.
LioneAL coris h, quartermaster
aboard the ill-fated vessel, dimin-
utive man, had saved from certain
death twenty of his fellow work
ers and passengers, swimming thru
shark-invested waters to the rescue
of white and black alike.
Twenty times this Negro work.
er placed his own life in jeopardy
to come to the assistance of drown
ing people. Several of those whom
he rescued had been in the water
for more than fifteen hours. and
were slowly succumbing to the ex-
posure and the effects of the lev
sea. When Licorish had first
boarded the lifeboat, there had been
no oars there. Bravely he had
slipped back into the water to re-
gain the oars that were floating
near capsized lifeboat, and re-
turning to his own lifeboat, kept
the twenty lives safe until aid ar
rived.
Race Discrimination.
Other examples of bravery among
the workers were revealed, notably
that of the stewarf, ), Mrs. Clara
Ball. On tn and, cases of
discrimination ...~ uelty on the
part of white passengers toward
Negroes were many. In one case,
white passengers in hfeboat,
sighting two people drifting in the
sea, one of them Negro steward
ess, had volunteered to take the
white man, a passenger, aboard,
but had refused to consider aiding
the Negro woman worker. 1t was
only after repeated entreaties that
they were finally prevailed upon to
take her aboard.
AS the facts of the Vestris dis
aster were slowly unravelled and
verified from the long list of con.
Continued on Page Five