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Ship of the Month - cont'd. 10. dered the engine stopped, sounded the general alarm, and after the bow of TOPDALSFJORD had swung free of the hole in the side of the mortally wounded laker, CEDARVILLE's port anchor was lowered, this despite the fact that the severity of the damage to CEDARVILLE ought to have been readily apparent, and valuable time was being wasted. With the ship taking on a port list, the damage was more closely inspected. It apparently was the 1st assistant engineer who suggested that the pumps should be started. The master then ordered that ballast be taken in on the starboard side to counteract the list. Nobody seemed to realized that the ship was in grave danger, the conveyor tunnel space running beneath all three cargo holds meaning that none of the holds were watertight. Efforts were made to rig a collision mat over the hole in the port side using a tar paulin, but for obvious reasons, this project failed. And still the minutes of safety for the crew were ticking away. Only then, apparently, did Captain Joppich formulate the idea that his ves sel should be beached as soon as possible. He tried to have the anchor raised, but it was fouled on the bottom, and only after the engine was reversed was the anchor freed. Joppich then put his ship full speed ahead and steered for the beach at Mackinaw City, although he seems to have had a somewhat faulty appreciation of the heading to take to reach the closest land. He advised the U . S. Coast Guard station at St. Ignace of what he was planning, but it was only after CEDARVILLE was under way, in the general direction of the beach, that it was thought necessary to send out a "Mayday" call on the radio. That call of distress was not made until 10: 10 a. m., and with the vessel becoming sluggish and listing ever more to the starboard side, it was evident that she never would reach shallow water. As the CEDARVILLE heeled ever farther over to starboard, the crew attempted to leave their ship. Lifeboat No. 1, on the high port side, could not be launched properly, but No. 2 on the starboard side floated free. Most of the crew, however, wound up in the 37-degree (Fahrenheit) water, where hypo thermia soon took hold of them. The WEISSENBURG managed to find and pick up all of those who survived, and TOPDALSFJORD, her flared bow stove in some 11 feet, also stood by but no survivors reached her. It was 10: 19 a. m. when the CEDARVILLE slid beneath the waters of the Straits, going down in about 90 feet of water. At the first distress call, the Coast Guard icebreaker MACKINAW had been dispatched from her berth at Charlevoix, Michigan, and when she reached the scene, she took thesurvivors off the WEISSENBURG and landed them at M ack inaw City. 25 men had survived from CEDARVILLE, two had succumbed to hypothermia during the rescue, and eight were missing. Divers later explor ing the wreck as it lay on its starboard side found five bodies in the ship, and two more later were r ec o v e r e d . The body of one stoker never was found. The enquiry was a strange event indeed. The Norwegian skipper of TOPDALS FJORD, although severely affected by the events of May 7th, appeared, but counsel for the CEDARVILLE's master, who was suffering from "nervous exhaus tion", tried to invoke the Fifth Amendment to the U . S. Constitution in the hope of protecting him from having to testify. This effort was struck down by a federal court which compelled him to attend the enquiry and to give evidence. It became evident during the course of the testimony that both TOPDALSFJORD and CEDARVILLE had been moving faster in the foggy Straits than the officers of either thought was the case, and all were shocked when they made their own new calculations at the enquiry. The salty's speed, when worked out at the enquiry, was 6 . 5 miles per hour, but even Captain Joppich's own calcula tions proved that CEDARVILLE had been travelling nearly 12 miles per hour up until very shortly before the collision. As to testimony about the speed and manoeuvres of CEDARVILLE before the impact, the Coast Guard accepted the evidence of the ship's wheelsman who was on watch at the time, and rejected