Modern Counterpart of Old-Time Pirates

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 17, 4 February 1937, Page 12

Modern Counterpart of Old-Time Pirates

Grim Tally of Vessels Scuttled to Gain Insurances

EXHAUSTIVE fesearches at Lloyd's have provided Mr. David Masters, the weilknown exponent of sea adventure, with exciting stories of ships sunk and burned for their insurance, of people who gambled on a vessel never returning to port, and of incidents, grim, hiimorous and trivial, in the lives pf those who go down to the sea in ships. The polite assumption that the gentle art of piracy ceased about the beginning of the nineteenth century is not borne out in fact. As Mr. Masters remarks: "In the heyday of the buccaneers and pirates a scuttled ship aroused little comment. But With the passing of those bad old times it was assumed that such piratical practices had fallen into abeyance, and we of the twentieth century might be forglven for thinking that they had ceased tp exist, whereas the truth is that the orgy of scuttling ships which took place after the Great War was never equalled sinpe men sailed the seas, the insurances on the vessels that were deliberately cast away amounting to over six milhon pounds sterling," • * * • •JHAT such a state of affabs should be possible is accounted fpr hy the depresr sion that followed what the author calls the "golden age" of the shipping industry. When the war ended anything that would float w^ls at a preipjum- "TJie leakiest old tqbs were dragged off the mud, patched up and put into commission. Tonnage values were forced up up by excited bidders qntii they touejied £40 a ton and more; in many cases thg ships had been apguired before the wai at a knoekdown priqe pf £4 or £§ a ton. "Never in all history was there such a shipping boom. Men who were wise enough to sign a contract fqr a ship made fortunes by assigning their rights to others. Owners who kept their heads throughopt the wa? lost them during the boom, The sun of Pfpsperity shope pp them and dazzled them hy its brightness. hpcky men bought ships and made fortunes out pf a single eargo. More than- one owner recovered the

whole cost of his ship in a voyage and made a profit besides. It was common for an owner to make £50,000 on a trip, Some with bigger ships made up to £100,000; others again were said to have made proflts twice and thrice as large," And then the boom burst. Ships that had been running at a hand- " some proflt began to show equally handsome (?) losses. The underwriters began to be worried. Quite naturally they anticipated a certain proportion of losses a year, particularly duriiig the autumn and, spring gales. % • * • "BUT in the throes of the slump the losses began to increase and large claims that were both unusual and unexpected began to come in. The experts werp rightly perturbed. It was not US though these losses were due to gales. Had it been bad weather the underwriters might have regarded themselves as unlueky. For instance, one ship apparently sank without cause, for the weather was good, her condition was sound, there were nq rqcks in the vicinity, hut still she sank. It was Greek-ownefl steamships that provided the underwriters at Lloyd's with most of the problems that Mr. Masters discus§es in this artiele. There was the case of the Olympia, for instance---she wa§ t^o Glen Ijopljio when she slid down the slip.way m 1896. Purchased fpr £170, Q00 in 1910, she set out for What was to prove her last voyage in June, 1921, with an insurance cqver of £210,000. Her skipper piled her up on the Formigas Rocks in the Azores, and her owner elaimed.the full amount from the underwriters. Unfprtunately for him, three out of the ipur ships he owned had suffered equally suspicious ends, and Lloyd's beeame suspicipus. They deeided to contest the case, and they brought to bear such a, Store pf expert knowledge that the captain pf the Olympia found hims&lf ip quahdary, In the final analysis, hpwever, it was thp Ship itself that condemned both captain and owner. Mute and immovable, she. bore silent witness to the direction in whicp she was steaming wheii she ran os the rpcks. As she lay her bpw ppinted fp the north. If it h&d been ppintini: to the.

south-east the swindle would have succeeded. The Olympia betrayed her masters, To the uninitiated, scuttling a ship may spem the easiest thing in the world. The seas are wide and lonbly, and one has only to persuade one's associates to tell the same tale and a favourable verdict appears a foregone conclusion. But the thing is not quite as simple as it appears at first sight. Experts are irritating, people, and they can ask such awkward questions. From past experience (gathered during the war) they know how a ship hehaves when she' strikes a mine, for instance. They can calculate just how long it takes a vessel to sink when her sea'cocks are deliberately opened. The captain of the loanna (Greek owned) did not know this when he reported that his vessel had struck a mine and sunk off the coast of Spain in 800 fathoms in February, 1921, He reported that sfie had sunk at 3.30 a.m. Unfortunately for him, the captain of the Baron Catheart sighted the loanna at about 8 o'clock next morning. The ship was thep. low in the water, but he paid little attentipji to her until his chief pflicer reported Significantly that the davits of the lifeboats were out. Steamipg closer, the Baron Catheart circled the loanna without seeing any signs of life abpard. * * * * "gY pow the abandoped ship was far gone. Her positiop from the time they had fir§t closed pn her was hppeless. Nothing they could do would have kept her aflqat. Nevertheless the whole matter was sp. very mysteripus that they did the next best thing. They could not save the Iqanna, but they could, apd did, pyoqjpre" U record which would prove their repo^t >t-o be true, fpr the chief ofRcer, NJr. Djckspn, brought up his qamera, and as they steamed round the loanna he took photograph after photograph, until he had stored UP on that spool a m pietures of the sinking ship, includini one as she dipped beneath the waves." It was this series of photographs that deeided the underwriters to fight the case, and enabled them to prove in Gourt that UP vessel which had been struck by a mir|e pould have sunk §o caluily anfi quietly.