Again, Girl Pat

Some 50 miles off the coast of French Guiana one day last week the steamer Lorraine Cross met a tiny, two-masted tub lolloping along under sail with a distress signal flying. When the master of the Lorraine Cross asked what was wrong, the four men on the little tub's deck shouted back that she was the Margaret Harold bound from London to Trinidad via Gibraltar, that they were completely out of food and fuel. The Lorraine Cross's captain observed that the ship's name had been painted out. He asked to see her papers. At once the four men yanked down their distress signal, hoisted sail, made off toward the South American coast. There every ship and port at once set eager watch for her, for the Lorraine Cross radioed that the shy Margaret Harold was really the motor trawler Girl Pat which ran away from Great Grimsby on the Humber, England, on All Fools' Day, was outlawed by Lloyd's and was last seen at Dakar, French West Africa, three weeks ago (TIME, June 8).

The many rumors about the motive of Girl Pat's wild escapade were last week laid by Harry Stone, her onetime mate, who was left behind in the Dakar Hospital. Said he: "When we left Grimsby, it was to fish. But Skipper Osborne had plans of his own. He was going to sell the boat in some foreign port and divide the proceeds with the crew. . . . We had no charts--only a child's atlas we'd bought at Woolworth's. . . . I was ill. In Dakar . . . they had to leave me behind. I can't say I'm sorry."

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