Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This story about a ship that had a really hard time keeping cooks appeared in the "Hull Daily Mail," December 19, 1946:

Two cooks who disappeared from a ship at the same spot on successive trips have created a new mystery of the sea. 

The story starts in September, when the 2,400 ton freighter Bantria, of the Cunard Line, was on a Mediterranean trip. While off Genoa the ship's cook, Clarence Arthur Laurie, aged 45, was reported missing. The ship turned and searched in vain. 

On her next trip, the Bantria was again in the Mediterranean when the new cook, Frank McNaught, aged 40, a single man, of 21 Armley-road, Liverpool, disappeared. Again the ship turned and made a search, but without success. 

The ship is now in Liverpool, and a BOT inquiry has failed to elucidate the double mystery. 

A member of the Bantria's crew said: "Each cook vanished when we were at sea during the night, and nobody knows how. Neither man appeared to have any trouble, or any enemies in the ship. No one suggests this is a hoodoo ship, but it does take a bit of explaining." 

Now comes the climax of the story. When someone called on Laurie's wife at her home in Bradford, to notify her of her husband's disappearance, the woman held up her hand and said: "Don't tell me. I know he's gone. I saw it in a vision last night through a spiritualist." 

A friend of McNaught, the second cook, said he had an idea that something was going to happen to him on the voyage, but said he was not afraid. 

The Bantria set sail with a third cook, one Fred Mather.  Mather told a reporter that he had not known about the double disappearance when he signed on.  He added cheerfully, "I'm not worrying.  I don't believe in such things.  But if I don't come back you'll know there's something in it."

I couldn't find anything more about the Bantria, so hopefully the blithe Mr. Mather did "come back."