["The Koombana", The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA), Thursday 11 April 1912, page 10]
THE KOOMBANA.
THE LAST MESSAGE.
ENDED IN CONFUSED SIGNALS.
Darwin, April 10.
The steamer Montoro, which arrived from Singapore on Tuesday morning, reports that when passing through the Balli Straits on March 21 on the voyage northward to Singapore, she spoke the steamer Koombana by wireless. The operator said he failed to catch the message clearly, but that he learned that the Koombana was in trouble. The message ended in a series of confused signals.
It is highly probable that the doomed vessel was at the very moment when the wireless message ended rushing to destruction. On that day the Koombana was due at Broome. On March 20 the German mail steamer Gneisenau spoke her when she was lying at Port Hedland, when the vessels were 800 miles apart. That was the last communication known to bave been made with the Koombana until the report from the Montoro.
AB notes:
Did the Koombana survive into March 21st? Contradictory reports of a message being received by Montoro remain interesting.
