THE SUCTION OF THE SANDS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 226, 18 June 1919, Page 8

THE SUCTION OF THE SANDS

Sir—On reading of the stranding of the Kowhai, I was reminded of a circumstance which is probably worth relating. In 1855, coming home from the Baltic, we were racing a steamer from Ivnnshidt to Kiel, when one morning, at 3 o'clock, we ran.on to Bornholm in a ctanso fog, ,<111(1 when the fog cleared awav wo were in a snug little cove immediately under the lighthouse. When the keeper came off, he said* there was not another place "round the island that we could have ran into. It was like a little dock. Well, Sir, we got out a 21-inch hawser right amidships, and an anchor out at each quarter, and rigged all capstans, tec on each deck, and decktackles laid along the deck. We were a large vessel, called tho Exmouth, crew 050, and an auxiliary of 800-h.p., and coins at 11 miles under sail and steam. When soundings were taken bow . and stern were afloat, with a bar of sand amidships. Well, order was piped, all hands man the capstans, and heave; and it was a heave, as the capstans were double-banked both inside and outside of the swiftcrs. Then, ns soon as the cables got like fiddle-strings, all hands ran athwart ship, and got her oil a roll; then fore aud aft, then capstans again; and so on alternately; and at 11 o'clock in the forenoon we moved off, just as the steamer we were racing hove in .night. Fortunately it was calm, for as the engine-J were started tho 24-inch hawser got between the fan and tho stern-post, anil brought the engines up standing. The' engineer camo up on deck, and reported he could not get the enßine to go. We were a !)0-gun line of battleship, firing the heaviest broadsido in the Navy.

Now. Sir, you may wonder why I write this epistle. It is this: Keep the snnd alive under the vessel's bottom, as the,sand sucks like an octopus, and is a' dead tow. It took us three days at sea to chop that hawser away from the' shaft—with great, long-shafted slices of the chisel pattern—hanging over the stern on planks.—l am. etc., HENRY WALTON. Waikanae. June 17, 1919.