SINKING OF SCHOONER

Hokitika Guardian, 27 June 1929, Page 7

SINKING OF SCHOONER

SURVIVORS’ ORDEAL. They stood under a dripping awn *.ig on board the Amida, 10 men in ungarees with staring eyes, as Caplin Sidney MacLauglilin, the young boston skipper, hove his brand new niinand, a yacht like a great white ■nil on the water, up Ambrose chan* j! and dropped anchor off QuaranIne (says the Springfield Daily Rojublican). They stood there in a Dw and stared 'at the dripping '.and. They were really nine and one, vnd the one toward whom the other» .eemed to lean was a wiry weather.iced Portuguese skipper, Master J. Perreira, of the four-masted schooner fames E. Coburn, lost off Bermuda. April 17. They looked ineongurous nose 10 in their dirty clothes, while lie natty officers and cr«w ol the bite yacht hustled about the deck. They, were a heterogenous lot them - ilves." “Eight of us is Portuguese,” aid one of them later on. Then here was Rice, the Negro mate from Baltimore, Milligan, the Irish donk•yman, and Sargent, “the Limey cook.”

Only Sargent was not there now with liis 10 shipmates. He had die-i ni the eighth day in the long boat, rho rest—these rescued men from the foundered Coburn —had l.ved gong on nine days, four of those last days without water, and here they were within a shout of laud.

But nobody spoke yet. Perron*a stared at the wet green nose of Staten Island, off the port beam of the white anchored yacht, and the others looked at him dumbly, then followed his line of sight. They were like men being fed after n famine. But nobody spoke. Finally the uniformed doctors finished inspection, and the dingy quarantine tug pulled away, and the busybody launch, Natalie Mae, which had been lying off with the yacht’s owner, Ernest R. Bchrend, on board, shoved alongside “Me,” said Captain MacLauglilin. “I didn’t do' anything. Go talk to Perreira back aft.”

That was a tall order. Try to talk to a man who has been in an open boat nine days. Perreira didn’t tell the whole story either. Tn the iw> days of the gale that preceded til** foundering of his vessel he had eaten practically nothing, hanging on tlie bridge every minute. RATIONS GO SHORT.

Then the Coburn went down, almost under their -feet, and lie began Ui

parcel out water from the b*aky ingallon cask and divide up wet sea biscuits out of the stove-in th; two or three of the men noticed hat 'lie skipper missed liis turn. They be-

gun to understand why the rations went so far as they did. But they, and not Pcrrcire, told that. The Poituguesc just shook his head tiredly and said nothing. But bis eyes were sunk deep in his head and li.'fc brown, weathered cheeks were caved in.

“A man don’t know what lie can stand till he has to,” he said. “That Limey cook was too old,” the rest of them said. “Tie was nigh 58. Poor old Sargent. He went out oi liis head clean a,nil died the night before he was picked up.”

The story ready went back to January when Perreira lost his other command, the Matthew S. Gray. His eyes sunk deeper and his voice grow hollow when he mentioned that. He didn’t like to toll how that schooner had gone on the rocks in Buzzard’s Bay in late winter, how lie had sent his crew in the only boat with the two children on hoard, had kept aboard by himself for a day arid a night, and then swam ashore when the boat broke up under him.

Tlie next command of this naturalised American, who was born in the Cape Verde Islands, was the 900-ton four-master James E .Coburn, which had a new keel put in and then sailed last April 2 from Baltimore for Martinique with 1300 tons of coal. A BIRTHDAY PRESENT. “Wo passed Cape Henry April 12,” went, on Perreira, “and all was well. We had fair winds the following days, and I reckoned we’d make a good voyage to Martinique. April 15 was my forty-eighth birthay. I was feeling pretty, good! ‘Maybe,’ I sn.vs to Mate Rich, ‘may.be I’ll get fair winds for a birthday present.’ “Well, long about 4 in the afternoon my birthday present camp in the shape or a nor’-wester. That blow was a devil. She kept risjnu and veering, and by night time she was around to the south-east.' That midnight was black and a whole gale blowing, into a sou’-wester by now. That cargo of coal began to work. My ship was labouring hard to the seaway and her seams sprang a bit. The wind kept up, and I. had t.Jjo donkeyman start the steam pump.”

The next day was the same, only worse. “The wind came from all directions,” . says Perreira. Every stitcji of sail had been taken in, and the schooner wallowed and heeled along before the blow under bare poles, The more she laboured the more the gearns opened up and the more watep she took. The steam pump could pot keep up and the captain had the haild pumps manned. Night settled again upon the howling Atlantic, and the James E. Coburn was riding lower and heavier. The ocean was reaching up and getting its wrestler’s hold on the waterlogged four-master. The next day, the .17th, was more of the same, coming to the same old climax of all founderings at sea. The schooner was making water like a sieve by now, the crew worked desperately in shifts at the pumps, the steam pumps sucked away in vain, for the cargo holds were awftsh and coal dust fouled the pumps. By noon of the 17th the gale was coming from west nor’-west and flogging the ooenn white. The bo’s’n staggered his way to the poop and reported to the master, “fourteen foot of water in the forehold, sir,” “Sound it aft,” said Perreira, Pretty soon the bo’s’n came back leaning against the gale. “Ten foot, Sir.”

The captain saw his ship was going “by the head.” He ordered the men to the boat, and all bands set frantically about the difficult business of lowering the 35-foot yawl in that sea. And at 2.30 p.m., with 15 feet of water in the fore hold, tlie 11 men got away with a tin of biscuits, 10 gallons of water, a few tins of food, a blanket, and a piece of canvas. The fo’c’s’le head was awash Ly then, and they bad to chop the boat falls with an axe to get clear of the sinking ship. Tn the excitement they lost three of the sflx oars, which vanished in the green swirl. They pulled off a quarter-mile to leeward and watched. The Coburn’s fo’c’s’le head was lathered with water, then slipped under, the poop rose ever so little, leaned to one side, then the whole hull was out of sight, and four masts, minted ever so little, disappeared slowly like needles going into green silk. But if the men thought they had saved themselves in that moment, they had another thought coming now. That was only the beginning of things. The master knew the way things were, and he resolved to try to save all hands if he could. He had managed to bring his sextant along, and lie knew he was 250 miles north by east of Bermuda when the schooner sank.