The 31 July 1975 edition of The Caymanian Compass carried three dramatic front-page stories. The Pageant Beach Hotel, owned by the Merren family, was destroyed by fire in less than half an hour. At the time of the blaze, the report noted, “Fire Service with its priority at Owen Roberts Airport, was unable to respond immediately to the call as a Cayman Airways flight was landing”.
Another story told of four Caymanians who had drifted in a small boat for about 18 hours before being rescued by Captain Lem Bodden and crew aboard the Tortue. Their boat ran out of gas after leaving the bank where they had been fishing. A tanker stopped and gave the men food and reported the position of the boat to Desmond Watler, who was directing the rescue mission. Bodden, Adrien Briggs and other boats were assisted by a Cayman Airways DC-3 looking out for the drifting boat, which was found, and the men brought safely back to Whitehall Bay.
The other article was about a 33-foot yacht that had set out from Miami with two men aboard, one who had been sailing since he was 6 years old and the other for whom it was his first time at sea. Encountering a storm after sailing through the Yucatan Pass, the boat developed engine and navigational-equipment problems and the sailors lost all their documents, including passports. The men contacted Surfside Water Sports by radio after managing to sail within two miles of Cayman, and their yacht was towed in by Bobby Soto’s Holiday Diver.
Page 8 had a story of a fire pump installed at the Aristocrat apartments, which were owned by “local confectioner Norberg Thompson”. The pump was to be supplied by a 40-foot well with a 200-foot hose. Fire Chief Kirkland Nixon, who watched a demonstration of the pump, said he was happy to see someone making an effort to help the Fire Department, noting that a lot of fires were caused by carelessness.
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