Bell of 1709 Tolls Ship News
LONDON — ^When news came to Lloyd's of London that Capt, Vernon Alcoek, master of the oil tanker Cheyenne, had sighted the missing racing cutter Endeavonr I some 260 miles southwest of Ireland, the famous' Lutine bell tolled the glad tidings. This bell has been rung ever since 1866 to give information of overdue vessels, once for bad news, twice for good. It comes from the French frigate La Lutine, which was captured by the British in 1799 but was wrecked shortly afterwards with nearly £1',000,000 wOrth of bullion on board, the greatest loss Lloyd's had sufferdd up to that time.' Some of the bullion was salvaged, and during one of the salvage operations, in 1866, the ship's bell was also brought to the surface. When news comes in of overdue. vessels, an official of Lloyd's goes to the rostrum, rings the bell, and reads out the information. Captain Alcock's report of sighting Endeavour caused the Lutine bell to be rung for the second time this year. The first time was when the same vessel was erroneously rcported to have been seen off the Azores some days previously. There is not mueh worlc nowadays for the famous bell. Badio communication and other safety devices of the sea have made the seas far less dangeroua and overdue vessels few and far batween.
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HBHETR19371120.2.180
Bibliographic details
Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 49, 20 November 1937, Page 18
Word Count
226Bell of 1709 Tolls Ship News Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 49, 20 November 1937, Page 18
Using This Item
NZME is the copyright owner for the Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of NZME. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Log in