POSTED AS MISSING.

Globe, Sydney, Wednesday 3 April, 1912.

"POSTED AS MISSING."

A Term Of Grim Meaning.

"The Koombana has been posted as missing"

was the heading of paragraphs in many of the

Australian newspapers during the week. Exactly

what this sentence means is aptly told in a 

description of Lloyd's London:

In the northern end of the room, says the writer,

immediately at the back of the corner-stand is

partitioned off, making a separate apartment,

known as the "Chamber of Horrors" and also

the "Graveyard". Here are posted copies of the

telegrams received reporting casualties, arrivals

and sailings. Unimportant casualties are not 

entered in the Log Book, but the reports of them

on yellow flimsy, are reported here. English

coastal reports are written on brown-tinted paper,

foreign arrivings and sailings on yellow tissue, 

and the ominous announcements of vessels

missing or overdue on white.

High on the top of the partition screen - a 

picturesque feature from any part of the room -

is mounted the bell, surrounded by the rudder-

chains of the once tall British frigate, Lutine,

which after lying for 60 years at the bottom of

the North Sea, is now placed in the very heart

of maritime Britain, both as a relic and to serve

a quaint purpose. When a vessel is unheard of

for so long as to be despaired of by her owners,

an application is made to the committee to have

the ship posted. If the application is entertained,

a printed notice is affixed to the board, in the 

Telegram room or 'Chamber of Horrors', to the

effect that the company would be glad of 

information concerning the vessel. This is done

on a Wednesday. If by the following Wednesday

no news has come to hand, the first notice is

replaced by another saying that ------- , which

left -------, on such and such a day, for -------

has not since been heard of. This is the process

of a ship being posted as missing at Lloyd's, and

on that day the loss is payable by the underwriters

and the crew are dead in law, to the extent that

probate of their wills can be obtained.

When a ship in which any amount of general 

interest is felt is so posted, the caller rings one

short stroke on the Lutine Bell. In the very un-

usual event afterwards of a ship arriving in port,

the caller rings two strokes, and makes the 

announcement from his rostrum. So, after over

a century ago having called the watches and told

the hours to the gallant crews of the two opposing

nations - for La Lutine was one of our captures

from the French - and then rung only to the ebb

and flow of the tides, the ancient bell, linked by

strange coincidence to its early associations,

now tolls only the losses and survivals of the sea.

Within two short weeks of the Koombana failing to arrive at Broome, she was posted as missing. Although only pieces of wreckage were discovered, without evidence of the wreck itself, there was no doubt in anyone's mind - Koombana was gone and there would be no 'two strokes on the Lutine Bell', only one.

courtesy Trove