A STORY OF THE SEA. A Ship given up for lost sails in the Golden Gate.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 154, 15 May 1886, Page 6

A STORY OF THE SEA. A Ship given up for lost sails in the Golden Gate.

Thekk was a scene of revelry and rejoicing out at 2,303 Polk street last night aays the " San Francisco Call." The place fairly blazed with the good cheer of a happy family re united. The Bailor husband and father who had long since been given up as lo&t and dead had returned, The scene was the home of Captain John Dodge, and all the merriment was caused by the fact that yesterday afternoon the bark Kaiakaua, John Dodge, master, which left Panama for this port on October 9, 1885, and had not since been heard from, sailed as unconcernedly into the Golden Gate as though nothing unusual had happened. I've been to sea for fifty years, and, to bo candid and tell you the truth, I don't think I care about ever going out beyond the heads again," said Captain Dodge, from the centre of his family circle, last e\oning, to an invading Call reporter. " Why its just like being planted out in Lone Mountain and walking back the next day and going to work to pay one's own funeral expenses, It isdecidedly embarassing. Here, nay wife, children and triends have been mourning for me for the last two months, and now I turn up like a trump card and spoil all the fun," and the jolly captain chuckled good naturedly. "How did it happen?" inquired the reporter. " Well, it was thi3 way. We started all right irom Panama on October 6th. Some old tars warned me about going out, and said I would be sure to strike calms ; but 1 wanted to get home, and wo started. We hadn't been out a week before the sails flapped against the rigging in a dead calm There wasn't enough stir in the air to pnt out a candle. The ocean waa as motionless as lead. The sun beat down mercilessly Was it hot ? Well, I should say so. Matches lying down on the table in my cabin would catch fire by themselves and burn up, Then it took to raining, I am not stretching it an inch when I say that for three months there were not fifteen days of sunshine in all, No, you are wrffng. Rain down in these parts need not be accompanied by wind. There was not a breath of breeze, except for an hour or so, occasionally, and then it came like a puff from a heated furnace We just drifted about on the ocean like atoy. Ido not know how we ever escaped. We had on board as cargo 1,522 pounds of powder and it was simply a phenomenal dispensation of luck that we were not blown up. The thunder and lightning waa simply horrifying. I have never experienced such storms, and when streaks of forked lightning would shoot out of the sky, and play hide and go-seek in our rigging the way it used to do, I can't understand why that powder did not go off. I don't kno*v what I ever did to deserve this kindness. " Did you make no headway at all V "Well, as 1 say, we occasionally had a few puffs of air, but it required 115 days for us to eight the Galapagos Islands; They are only 700 miles from Panama. Why, for sixty days we laid off the Cocos Islands, and day in and day out we never lost eis;ht cf them- just drifting about within a circuit of a dozen knots, perhaps." Did your provisions hold out ?" 41 Well, no. We began to get down to pretty close cropping, and I determined to geb to the Galapagos Islands for a fresh supply. Luckily for us, we met a whaler which had an overstock of food ann we took in a good store. The Captain of the whaler warned me about going to the Galapagos Islands. He had just come from there, and he said he was glad to get away with his life. The islands are owned by the Government of Ecuador, which sends out men to gather dye moss on them. There is nothing to eat on the islands except what ie taken there. The class of men who will go there are a pretty rough lot anyhow, and when they are starved for several months they get a great deal rougher. The whalers said that the wild men on the islands had killed their superintendent, seized all the provisions on a ship lying in their port, and would have captured the whaler had it not put out to sea just in time. We concluded after hearing this talo to give the Galapagos Islands a wide berth. On February Ist a fresh breeze sprang up and we made the remaining 3,300 miles in fifty days, you see. Our provisions had almost given out on last Friday, when we were 500 miles from this port. I measured up and iouml we only had 20 pounds of hard tack and 20 pounds of sail' beef. I decided to divide it into ten rations for the crew of ten next morning, but as the day broke we sighted the brig Selma, and she gave us a fresh store, which lasted us. Well, that is all."