SEA SURGERY.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16415, 8 January 1919, Page 9

SEA SURGERY.

« — You mav not know it, but many a fine ship 'afloat to-day would nave gone to join liei* thousand sunken wishers were it not for the gallant worft of his Majesty's rescue tugs. These sturdy, broad-nosed craft go rummaging into the waste spaces ot the deep seas seeking tho casualty that has a "Blighty" wound a-s big as a church door. . | Had you seen H.M. Eescuc lug Chick in harbour on a recent Sunday morning you would have found it hard to have imagined her as she was two days before—the sole support of a roeling steamer ten times her own size/ plugging away for port with every unit of her maximum liorsepower. It was 2 a.m. when she got word that tlie s.s. Incognita had received a "mouldy" in her vitals and was helplessly drifting somewhere betwoen here and Aftierica. At that moment the Chick's riding-lights and the murmuring steam-feather trembling at her exhaust were the only signs of life aboard. In'five minutes she was slipping her buoy, her steaming lights had gone aloft, and the murmuring feather was growing into a buzzing plume. Twenty minutes, and she was making for the open sea. Now begins a hunt for a needle in a havstack—-a moving needle in boundless stack. Broad day finds the Chick approaching tho prescribed area, but when at last the master reckons he should be within a wireless "hail" of the torpedoed ship dusk is already on the sea. Hope falls with the night, for the wireless operator reports "No reply." Only with the dawn does the Chick discover that she is actually within sight of the Incognita, whoso masts lie against the morning sky at an angle of nearly 4o degrees. A point or two to starboard and the Chick is brought neatly ahead of the helpless steamer. " 'Stern easy" until near enough for a line to fall across the tug's low quarters; a rope follows, then a steel hawser. All is made fast, and slowly, slowly—for all the world like a stretcher party with- a bad case—the procession moves towards port. But at sea Red Cross work no more enjoys immunity from Hun savagery than it does ashore, and as the Incognita makes a splendid target for submarine attack, the Chick's gun's crew stand by their weaipon. A glad sight is the arrival of swift patrol vessels detached by the Navy ashore to escort the tug and her tow. With them at hand it is a simple matter of "keeping on, keeping on." Tho Chick's captain has had 110 sleep for 48 hours Into the port of _ the Chick makes a modest but triumphal entry nest day, still towing her ten thousand ton patiftit behind h pl '- Another hour and she has left the Incognita in the healing hands of dockyard mateys. Honour to the Rescue Tugs. the Royal Army Medical Corps of the deer! —(L.AV.A. in London "Dailv Mail.")'