Yokohama: Pacific Ocean Agitated By Strange Currents
San Francisco, Sept. 5 — The Toyo Kisen Kaisha liner Taiyo Maru, reported endangered 300 miles off Yokohama, and her passenger list of 600 persons in peril, is safe, according to a radiogram from the Japanese government station at Tokioka to the Radio Corporation of American here this morning.
"Taiyo Maru safe" were the three words that flashed across the Pacific from Japan, allaying the fears of thousands of people who reported having relatives aboard the vessel bound for Japan.
This is the first word to be received regarding the Taiyo since early yesterday morning when the government radio station at Cordova Alaska, reported the Taiyo was ending out S. O. S. signals.
According to latest reports the Taiyo Maru is disabled three hundred miles east of Yokohama, her propeller having been torn off by the giant tidal wave. The ship is leaking badly, and the battleship Huron of the Pacific fleet is standing by ready to transfer passengers if necessary.
San Francisco, Sept. 5 -The Pacific ocean is being agitated by strange currents and swept by huge waves following the Japanese earthquakes.
Fifty thousand dollars damage has been done to ships in the harbor at San Pedro, it is estimated by the extraordinary seas.
One vessel wirelessed that she had been carried twenty miles off course by a strange current.
The Taiyo Maru, crack liner of the Toyo Kisen Kaisha line, radioed Tuesday that she was in distress three days out of Yokohama, and asked for help.(Editor's Note: It is this ship upon when the Reynolds-Winters party of this city are traveling)
The Taiyo Maru carries 600 passengers . Her wireless signal was heard by the station at Cordova, Alaska, relayed to the naval station at Bremerton, Wash., and thence to the company's office in San Francisco. Nothing further has been heard from her. Officials of the line said this silence indicated the vessel probably is safe.
The strange behavior of the sea is principally noticeable at San Pedro. The damage in the harbor there was caused by the snapping of hawsers, some twelve inches thick, which proved too weak to hold some of the ships to their moorings.
Some seamen say that the four tidal waves which struck the southern California coast Sunday night, followed by huge surges and the ensuing heavy seas are but forerunners of a large tidal wave which is racing across the Pacific from Japan. So far, however, no such phenomenon has been reported by ships at sea. Although no details of what happened to the Taiyo Maru were contained in its wireless, the assumption is that it was damaged by one of the huge waves which have been reported sweeping over the Pacific.
There are many notable passengers aboard. These include: Viscount and Viscountess K. Matsudaira, who are attached to the Mikado's royal household; Mrs. K. Kaku and son, wife and child of the Japanese consul at New Orleans; the Reverend Brother James Murphy, Calhoon school teacher; and Rev. Paul Cuyan and the following Catholic missionaries: Hallerback, Wilson, Hubbard, Place, Stratton, O'Day, Bachman, Bailey, Gale, Senger, Gealy, Bear, Lofgren, LaFebre, Young, Bach, Pennypacker, Pect, Long, Frazyer, Sokes, Cummins, Crocker, Sahrples, Holland and Hallard, and Jose Firpo, an Argentine millionaire with his family.
WAVES SUBSIDING
San Francisco, Sept. 5 -Tidal disturbances along the Pacific coast which followed the tidal wave in Japan caused by the earthquake are subsiding according to the coast and geodetic survey office here. H. S. Ballard, government tide observer, said that he latest reading showed tides to be only about 2.5 inches above normal.