Return of A Native

Barbados Islanders can remember Emanuel Valverde as a penniless pickaninny. But inhabitants of President Street, Brooklyn, remember him as a middleaged, wealthy, slightly bombastic Negro, an exporter of fabulous things to the West Indies. Last week he completed preparations for the realization of his life's dream--to show Barbados the Brooklyn Valverde, the man of importance.

He had bought a secondhand, 93-ton yacht. With great ceremony he had re-christened it the Barbados after the island of his birth. He bought also two gaudy Packard limousines, seven pianos, which he put aboard his ship. He hired a captain, a crew, a chauffeur named Willie. With this outfit he would return to Barbados and make himself a king of trade. Last week he put to sea for the 1,500-mi. voyage home.

Off the New Jersey coast the little vessel ran into a hammering storm. She was only 97 ft. long, with a beam of 22 ft. and a draught of 6 ft. 4 in. U. S. inspectors had approved her only for harbor hauls. When Captain Louis Hough, a white man, saw water in the engineroom, he decided to run for shelter behind Delaware Breakwater. Emanuel Valverde, his wife and Willie went below while the Captain vainly tried to get up a sea-bucking head of steam.

At 1:30 next morning the Barbados foundered. Captain Hough and eight men (including Joseph Valverde, cousin of the owner) got to the ship's one lifeboat, floated in it off the Delaware Capes for 68 bitter-cold hours. When three of them died, they were slipped overboard by the others. The storm was still raging when the remaining five were rescued by Clyde Line's S. S. Henry R. Mallory. Emanuel Valverde, his wife, Willie the chauffeur and two seamen stayed with the Barbados, the two Packard limousines, the seven pianos and Emanuel Valverde's dream-- at the bottom of the sea.

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