Notes and Events.

Manawatu Herald, 5 March 1895, Page 3

Notes and Events.

» Resuming the subject of pilots we find that Mr Richard Postgate gave an account of the perilous position the N. 2. Shipping Go's. Pareora was once in. A gale came on just as the ship was anchored in the Downs and the pilot's duty was done. This was in 1881. The captain asked him to stay, and having agreed to do bo he ordered a second anchor to be let go. Long before midnight it was blowing a terrific gate, and was as black as pitch. Suddenly two vessels were seen close upon the Pareora, one a large merchant ship which foundered during the night, the other was from Liverpool, also a large sailing Bhip, the Zarnaea. Presently it was noticed that the latter vessel's second anchor had parted and she was drifting clown on the pilot's vessel. She came athwart the Pareora's hawse and parted the cables". The cables were slipped and the vessels parted, otherwise a collision would have occurred and probably both would have gone down. The foresail, foretopsail, and a jib was blown out and the Pareora was going broadside on to the sand. The pilot ordered some of the men to go aloft and cut away the foretopsail, which was blowing loose. They refused, and aeked " Have we time to get down again before she goes on the sand?" The pilot said "It doesn't matter where you are when she strikes, for not a man of you will outlive it." They therefore went up and cut away the sail, which saved the Bhip, as it just touched the spit. The ship got clear into the North Sea where they drove before the wind for four or five days and then got back to Gravesend to refit. The pilots consider the Thames the most difficult of navigation of any port. From London Bridge to Duhgeness is 110 miles and the whole of that navigation is intricate and difficult in the extreme. In some parts the width of the channel is not the length of the ship. The pilots never leave the deck between there and the Isle of Wight. It has been stated that out of the 60,000 vessels that had come into the Thames for the twenty years before 1870 only two had been lost that had Trinity House pilots aboard. On a hot night a distressed writer is glad, even when the lamp is alight, to have the window open. But only glad for a short time for if thieves do not break in and steal, moths do, and carry away the patience of the human victim. Moths are interesting insects in their movements and very wide awake. It enters the dwelling in a bee line for the lamp, whirls round and round it like a mad dervish, and then flops in the eye of the writer. To seize a paper-cutter with which to slay the tormentor may be only the work of a moment, but, hey preßto, where's the moth ? It is probably on the ceiling carefully combing its wings out for fuither devilment and amusingly contemplating the cum* brous proceedings of that creatureman. Utterly unable to remain steady, "as giddy aB a butterfly " is an old proverb, the moth is pot long before it commences its teasing tactics. Again arrangements are made to slay it, and before success crowns the fell-destroyer's efforts a playful tattoo is made upon table, lamp, papers and anything and everything upon which the moth can jump. Having had some such engagement we turned to the dictionary for relief, to know by what uncivilised name we could scientifically and severely speak to that insect, but got little help excepting the wish it might have to carry upon its back, thus handicapping its movements, the name its godfathers had blessed it with. We gladly find a moth is "a nocturnal or crepuscular lepidopterous insect." It serves it right and we only hope it is ashamed of it. Next time such an evil thing bothers us we shall just get up and call it by its full name, and then—- it may lew.