WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 128, 28 February 1928, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By.

T.D.H.)

The League of Nations may plan universal disarmament—but the Italian newspapers warn it not on any account to interfere in Italy’s row with Austria. People should not imagine that they have no bones broken because an X-ray examination does not reveal the fact.— Evidence at a Wellington inquest has shown that in the case of a patient with eight ribs fractured no trace of any one of these eight fractures was revealed by X-ray examination at Wellington Hospital, and the patient was allowed home with his eight broken ribs untended, and subsequently died. As the Coroner holds that nobody is to blame, this occurrence is rather shattering to a belief in the efficacy of expensive X-ray plants in infallibly’ revealing fractured bones.

With the C. A. Larsen on the rocks at Stewart Island, it is interesting to recall that the late Captain C. A. Larsen, after whom the. vessel was named, and who died in the Ross Sea in 1924, was the pioneer Norwegian whaler in the Antarctic. Captain Larsen had begun whaling in 1884 when he hunted the bottle-nosed whale in the Arctic, and in 1892 he heard that a Dundee whaler, Mr. R. Kinnes, was sending out some ships to look for right whales in the Antarctic. As a result of this news Captain Larsen decided also to see what was doing, and went out in the Jason, an old-time whaler, the two expeditions meeting tn the far south, but finding no right whales. This British expedition caused a revival of interest in discovery in the Antarctic, and resulted in the expeditions of Captain Scott and others. If it had been equipped for tackling other whales than the right whale, .the great Antarctic whale industry might to-dav have been British instead of Norwegian. *

The pioneer in modern Norwegian whaling was Captain Svend Foyn, wTio, awav back in the ’sixties, was greatlv impressed bv the large numbers of finner whalers to be seen in the Arctic. As these whales sink when killed, they cannot be handled bv the open boats sent out bv the old-time whalers. Svend Fovn first invented the modern explosive gun harpoon in place of the old hand harnoon. This gave a much greater range than had been possessed before, and as steam was coming in, the obvious step was to put it at the bow of a steamer. Persevering with his ideas, Svend Foyn developed the notion of small chasers and a factory ship. The chasers fired in the ex•flosive harpoon, used their steam windlass to haul the whales, had a pump for inflating the carcass with air and so keeping them afloat, and towed them to the factory ship or shore station, to be dealt with.

Captain Svend Foyn did not meet with success for a long time. He lost ships, men, and money, and it is said that h ran through the Norwegian equivalent of £lO,OOO before he turned, the corner. He was convinced all the time that he was on the right lines. The right whale capable of being dealt with easily on the old-time lines had been fished out, and his method, he was convinced, was the onlv satisfactory one for dealing with the finner.

It is said to have been a Melbourne man who first turned Svend Foyn’s attentions to the Antarctic. The Grays, of Peterhead well known whalers in the noith, had failed in 1891 to float a compan v for Antarctic whaling, then Mr. Kinties in 1892 made his unsuccessful venture as related above. A few years later Mr. H. H. Bull,, of Melbourne, failing to get Australian capital for a whaling venture, went off to. Norway and got in touch with Svend Foyn, then over 80 and verv wealthy. The result of this move was the appearance of the Svend Fovn method of whaling in the Southern Ocean,'and the virtual 1110110polv of the world s whaling industry by the’enterprising Norsemen.

Describing the Svend Foyn methods in the London “Sphere” recently, Mr. C. J. Cutcliffe H.vne wrote: “Captain Fovn shot his harpoon out of a gun. I believe he had a good many busts before he evolved the present standardised pattern, which is a howitzer-look-ing affair, swivelling like a duck-gun, and with a duck-gun’s wooden handle. Recoil is attended to, the missile is partiv harpoon with four folding barbs, partly bomb, loaded with high explosive ’ On the shank of it is a ring, to which is ’shackled a four-inch warp. The forty fathoms of this are snaked down on” the little steamboat's foredeck for easy passage through a fairlead A kink or a snarl when a wounded finner is sounding might easily mean half the bows of the steamer following the whale. Yo;j have to take care when you have made a catch with some seventy to ninety tons of whale on the end of your line. ’ The old idea of plaving a whale for half a day and stabbing it with lances at intervals has lieen killed as dead as a door-nail bv the Svend Foyn method of shooting it dead at the word “Go.

George Washington, historians affirm, never cut down the cherry tree; King Allred never let the cakes burn; Wellington never said: “Up Guards and at ’em.” And now Professor Andrade at the Royal Institution has recently asserted that the old story that Watt was led to invent the steam engine by plaving with a tea-kettle has no foundation'. What actually happened was that Watt, who was practising as an instrument maker, was asked to repair a model of a Newcomen engine. In investigating the causes which prevented the model working he was led to seek for a bettter design, and ultimately invented the separate condenser which was the essential advance that made the steam-engine an economic source of power.

Serjeant Sullivan in “Old Ireland’ tells a story of an Irish lady who was fond of litigation, but a little forgetful in her pursuit of damages. She sued the Great Southern Railway at the Tralee Assizes for damages, sustained bv slipping on the platform when she was running for a train. The company, unluckily for the lady., proved that this was the fourth accident for which they had been asked to pay this plaintiff—and on the last occasion she had recovered thousands on the basis of total and permanent paralysis. "AS I GIRD ON FOR FIGHTING.” As I gird on for fighting Mv sword upon my thigh, I think on old ill-fortunes Of better men than I. Think I, the round world over, What golden lads are low 'ith hurts not mine to mourn for And shames I shall not know. What evil luck soever For me remains in store, ’Tis sure much finer fellows Have fared much worse before. So here are things to think on That ought to make me brave, As I strap on for fighting Mv sword that will not save. —A. E. Housman.