The Shanghai Power Company has carried out a most important extension to its activities. By arrangement with the Chinese Government, it has acquired a new franchise to supply electric energy to the extra-Settlement area in the Western District. This arrangement came into immediate effect, yesterday and the relevant new franchise will be operated by company separate from but lied to the Shanghai Power Company. Tt has, of course, direct bearing on the extra Settlement roads problem, to the solution of which it should make dangerous list and at one time seem-das if she might turn turtle, Her skepper, Captain Phillip Gowing, and her chief engineer, Mr R. C, Pass, did what they could to stem the ruin, Under British law they and the crew had a lien on the ship for their wages, tout not under Chinese law, and they lay at the mercy of courts which either could not or would not come to any deelsion, British consular intervention on behalf of the British members of the crew also proved unavailing and Anally the captain, an old man of 74, threw up the sponge, played out, and went into a hospital in Hongkong.
He and Mr. Pass each had more than $12,000" owing to them as wages, with no prospect of collecting it, "At one period their hopes were raised by an offer from a Japanese firm of $85,000 for the ship for breaking up. Whatever might have come of this offer, however, was killed by the outbreak of Gen. Teal Ting-kal's rebellion against the Nanking Government and the campaign through which the Government crushed it.
Nearly Capsized 'The thrilling story how the Asia nearly went to Davy Jones' locker in Amoy harbour has already been told in the columns of this journal. Only the most desperate efforts of Mr. Pass, the Filipino doctor, and the three Chinese who remained as a unclays of the crew, saved her capsizing. Pumps were the most urgent need and court officials appeared {o be blissfully careless of the fact, though told of it repeatedly.
"The hopes of the crew were raised last summer by reports that the courts had decided that the ship should be fictioned. Since that time no information of the steve taken has come {o Shanghai. She may have been autioned and bought by Japanese for breaking up. This seems the best explanation why she should be towed out to sea in her very perilous condi-fon—an attempt to get into a Japanese harbour before the winter storms could get her. But it looks Ike th attempt that has falled.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.