Summary (ZL): This newspaper article—about 1750 words—begins with “Sable Island’s shifting sands, which have menaced mariners for four centuries, have claimed another victim with the Greek freighter Alfios hard aground at the island’s southern tip.” The report states that after two salvage tugs tried without success to pull the vessel free, the crew and passengers were taken off, and the ship was left “in the grip of the sands”. The author continues with some brief mentions of familiar events such as the Marquis de la Roche’s attempt to establish a colony on the island, and then presents a remarkable snippet of misinformation: “In 1774 the Government of Nova Scotia sent a party of coastguards to the island, but instead of bringing aid to shipwrecked mariners, they plundered the stricken ships and killed the crews. They had planted false beacons on the island to lure even more ships to their doom. The plundering ended in 1781, when the news reached the Duke of Kent who was living in Halifax at the time.” The article ends with a few sentences about the Department of Transport operation on the island and delivery of supplies by the Lady Laurier.
