Former Navigating Officer of U. S. Collier, Who Went Over Her Course Later, Convinced She Broke in Two Under Strain of Badly Stowed Cargo, Passed Buoy He Believed Hers.

New York—In an Interview given to The World, Lieut. James M. Hays who was navigating officer of the navy collier Cyclops until a few days before she put to sea on a voyage from which she never returned, said that when he went on the collier Orion over the Cyclops‘s course he learned enough from floating objects and Inquiries made in Brazilian ports to satisfy himself as to the fate of the missing collier and her crew.

From the bridge of the Orion, on which h also was navigating officer, he saw a buoy and what appeared to be a life-raft such as the Cyclops carried. The buoy was in latitude 15.31 north and longitude 58.27 west, or about 150 miles northeast of Bermuda.

Mass for Passenger on Missing Ship Mysteriously Advertised in Brazil

AN ATLANTIC PORT, May 5.— German agents in South America are believed to have knowledge of the fate of the United States Navy collier Cyclops, missing almost two months, according to passengers on a British liner arriving here to-day from Rio de Janeiro.

Reports that the Cyclops was either captured or sunk by a U-boat or German raider, were thought to be greatly strengthened by an occurrence which stirred the Brazilian capital a fortnight after the collier disappeared. This was three weeks before the Navy Department announced officially that the vessel was overdue.

There appeared in a Brazilian paper about March 27 an obscure announcement in Portuguese. It was to the effect that a mass would be said for Alfred L. Moreau Gottschalk, United States Consul-General at Rio de Janeiro, and a passenger on the Cyclops. A large Catholic church and the time were designated.

Collier May be in Port of Missing Men

Many Theories Suggested to Account for the Disappearance of the Cyclops.

Washington, June 1.—What became of the missing collier Cyclops? Is she a prize in some German port, the victim of treachery? Does she lie disabled in some unfrequented cove of the tropical seas, driven there and helpless by accident?

Or has she made her last voyage and with more than 300 souls turn up in the Port of Missing Men to join seventeen other ships of the American Navy which have disappeared just as mysteriously since 1781?

Sailing from Barbados in the West Indies March 4 with a complement of 295 men the great 19,000-ton naval collier has not since been sighted or reported. By order of the Navy Department all available navy craft in Southern waters have been making a dragnet search for the vessel, but daily the conviction among officials grows stronger that the great modern mystery of the sea will remain unsolved.