Heroism on the Seas.

Hastings Standard, Issue 234, 30 January 1897, Page 3

Heroism on the Seas.

THE ORIENT-PIIYLISS AFFAIR. A GRAPHIC ACCOUNT.

The following account of the OrientPhyliss incident has been supplied to a Sydney paper by an eyewitness:— The relief of the starving seamen of the brig Phyliss by the boat's crew from the line Orient, which formed the subject of the big public demonstration presided over by Governor Hampden in Sydney on Tuesday night, was a truly stirring deed. The big steamer on its way from Melbourne to Sydney encountered a hurricane. It raged for many hours and raised a mountainous sea, which continued when the wind abated. In pursuance of mail-steamer tactics. Captain Inskip put out far from land, and there remote from the ordinary steamer track found the brig, her sails blown to ribbons, helplessly wallowing in the trough of the huge waves. Signals showed that her crew were starving, and as she had lost her boat, nothing remained but for the Orient, herself tossed about like a cork by giganticshort seas which broke every time, to §end a boat with food. It was an appalliug task, truly a forlorn hope, but Mr E. J. Ranken, R.N.R., the chief officer, offered to face it, and at once picked a crew of six from the numerous seamen who volunteered. The gallant six were not a big set of men, three of them were distinctly undersized, but they were a well-knit, tough lot, tit to pull for their lives, which was exactly what they had to do for the next three hours and a half. Having put on life-belts, they got into a clean-lined, smart-looking boat of semi-whaler type hung near the steamer's stern, and took their daring plunge—in which their craft was so badly stove that thereafter she had to be continuously baled. But they got away, and soon it was perceived that the 'boat had not only a grand set of oarsmen but that it possessed m the chief officer a rough-water helmsman : such as is rarely met except in a whaling crew. So tremendous were the seas that for quite half the time yon could not catch, even from the high vantage of the Orient s hurricane deck, a single glimpse of the boat as itchased the distressed brig, which went to leeward, and thus greatly added to the big task the Orient men had set themselves. When the boat was lowered the brig was within about 500 yards of the mail steamer, now hove-to. hut owing to the confused, breaking sea and varying wind it is probable that the crew had to pull six or seven times that to reach the stem of the br:g o\<.r which supplies were with difficulty pa>»td by line. With the r nt ran the real troubles of the Or i i ?n. The sky to windward i nt i an evil seowl, along came i burr cant-squall and a still more difficult eea, and lor * time

neither brig nor boat was visible from th;; Orient. Gloom settled on t!io steamer's crew and pass. vfar night was near and for a boat to be separated from the .-nrrnur in ;-;-.h water uxrvi.t certain d< ;:th : -r the r;> t-nr-iing re von and, at 1.---.V w<-iv the men to ■ • u-.i tb>- si- p ? the boat at last did r-nppt. t, on p- side from vb'-eb >! I.ud 1: n dr j>ped and which : become the weather side, and when at length it got within one hundred yarils of the big vessel the now exhausted men looked —as if to measure their chance and the people on deck looked down, far down into the wave-hollow, and thought of them in the same helpless way one thinks of the drowning dog which he sees vainly treading water along the sea wall, devoid of any landing place. " Buckley's show " was plainly the portion of that gallant band of sportsmen. " Can't do it sir," shouted the chief officer, above the roar of the storm, to the anxious captain on the bridge—" too dangerous—must try the other side." The captain told the mate and his men to save themselves, for the boat could not be saved. And then another rainsquall came in the growing darkness, half-an-hourand during which the boat was sometimes visible and sometimes utterly invisible from the ship, was spent in getting to lee. And what a lee it was ! When those on deck looked down and saw in the great gulfs the little boat, on which the electric light had now been turned some of them went below that they might not see the end. One man, more " done" than the rest, was pulled up on a bow-line, but the others simply hung on to ropes, and—marvellous feat of endurance under the circumstances—were hauled the whole way from boat to bulwarks. Three men came up on one line—the chief officer was the last man out of the boat, and not one of the lot could stand when he reached deck. The boat drifted away in the darkness, and has since been found beached near I'lladulla. The men, when they reached the weather-side of the steamer, certainly never expected to see land again, and the chief officer, one of them told the present writer next morning, said " time for prayers had come." Altogether, it was a sight to make a man's blood tingle, but it was one which nobody would care to see twice.