WAR FLOTSAM AND JETSAM

Taihape Daily Times, 26 November 1917, Page 3

WAR FLOTSAM AND JETSAM

TALES THAT THE SEA TELLS. “Every tide that conies up the shore has its tale of the war, and rolling back, leaves it written plainly and deeply in the broad acres of golden sand.” A time ago, states the Globe, the beach was strewn with cork and bales of cork. For a good ten miles it was cork, cork all the way ? here a bale, here tiny pieces. The stuff was what that wonderful linoleum is made of. It came in on a big sea, and some of the bales were toseed over the seawall into the ditches of the corn Helds ! beyond, and there they are to this day. They cannot be got away without horses and carts and much heaving, and seemingly nobody has time to go after them, or maybe nobody • wants them. The torpedo hit the vessel fair and square amidships j and, as though her gaping wound was a mere trifle, she ran for it, her cargo of cork being rolled overboard as she limped painfully through, the big waves. Sie would have reached the 'shore but for rocks —insignificant things, but sufficient to stop her and hold her. Here she came to rest and was abandoned, and here she was till a time back, a gaunt and fearsome thing with her broken and funnels lopsided. Then one morning she was gaffe. What had become of her no one knew. It was a mystery, and a mystery it remains. Another day thei'S was a crutch on the sand, a plain deal crutch. There was also a deck chair ; a mattress, a little table, and corked medicine bottles with medicine in them. As we drew attention to the miscellany we realised that a hospital ship had been sent below was obviously too true. Unlike Whitehall, what the sea knows it tells, and that there may be mistake about it, brings it to our very doors A blade of a; aeroplan’s a beautiful, cate bit of work, floated amongst us as we bathed on another occasio Then we chanced by the information that a bottle containing a message from an escaped German prisoner haf been picked up. The man gave t news that he was aboard a vessel for Holland. He thanked the Government for the generous treatment he had received at its hands, and fina, trusted that the time was not far distant when England and Germany would be on the best of terms again. It would have been more interesting to have learned the name of the vessel, how the fellow had managed to board her, and whether he had shipped before the mast or as a passenger, and who is the traitor in our midst who had helped him to get clear of the country. Escape is nigh impossible without help. Another bottle that was cast on the sand one evening had been dropped from a Zeppelin; at- so stated its message. It had been dropped from a height of about half a mile, and the message sang of victories in the west, of our failures eastward and of air raid to follow air raid, SHU' another bottled message came from a brave English laddie. “The ship,” he wrote, “was mined or torpedoed about an hour and is steadily settling down. Every boat, chock full, has pulled away, and yet there still remain 20 of the crew aboard. A big se a is running, no help is in sight, it is nearly dark.” And later he added: “It is pitch dark now, the decks jflft awash, only one light burns away goes Jack Plumpton for Kingdom Come.” Then, obviously, he had j slipped the written words into the bottle, corked it, and coolly gone "to his fate_ One can have no two opinions of a sailor lad who can thus act J with Death looking over his shoulder. Call him a hero of heroes, and you do scant justice to his memory.

An occasional mine has come in on the tide, too. One was dashed against a breakwater, and exploding, blew the greater part of the structure to pieces. Great piles, more than a foot thick and many feet long, were hurled nearly a quarter of a mile, and the explosion, which -came in the night, rattled windows and shook houses and cottages miles away. Such is one of the dangers to be on our guard against these days, with the sea so full of floating mines. Some are apt to come in on evgry biggish sea, and to be dumped heavily against something or other, and to destroy both life and property hatchways, canvas, flags of several nations, and even oilskins and sou’-westers, perhaps thrown hastily aside for the sake of more freedom for swimming, have also been deposited on our golden I sands. Again, how many empty boats have drifted in at one time and another. Horribly, battered have some of them been, indeed, not a thwart left and and little more than the gaunt skeleton. Th e boats can be seen coming, bottom upmost, a long way away, and intensely excited to the seaside villagers become on seeing the black things bobbing up and down and -slowly drifting nearer and nearer. Truly, strange things are these!