PIRATES STILL FLOURISH.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 226, 30 January 1911, Page 8

PIRATES STILL FLOURISH.

SAILORS MAKE THEIR CAPTAIN WALK THE PLANK. A few weeks ago a London man was sentenced to penal servitude for life for the crime of piracy. It sounds preposterous to talk of the black (lag in these days of forty-thousand-ton liners and wireless telegraphy, yet the bald fact remains that piracy is by no means an -extinct offence. This modern buccaneer was a steward who, after serving in various ships, was stranded at Callao, in Peru. There he picked up with a man named ifhcrratl, and the two shipped aboard a small schooner, the Neuva Tigre. They, with the captain and mate, composed the whole crew.

A week out from port those two precious scoundrels attacked the captain and mate with an axe and gun, and literally made them walk the plank in the most approved eighteenth century fashion.

They then re-named the vessel White Rose, and set sail for nowhere in particular. Neither knew the first principles of navigation, so eventually they ran ashore in the Gilbert Islands, where they were promptly arrested. The most daring case of piracy on record for years past occurred last August aboard the Alaska-Pacific liner Buckman, when two armed passengers made a deliberate attempt to seize the big ship and her cargo. One of them, named Thomas, took a revolver, went into the cabin, and coolly shop Captain Wood, then ran on deck to help his accomplice, whom he had left to tackle the mate on the bridge. But the mate had been too quick for the pirate, and Thomas reached the deck to And "is accomplice in irons. He at once seizeu a lifebuoy and jumped overboard. As he was never seen again he was, presumably, drowned. Aboard the Italian Transatlantic liner Margherita there was a few years ago a regular Captain Kettle battle. The steamer, after leaving Trieste, called at Messina, and there twenty-two villainous Sicilians stowed themselves away. As soon as the Margherita was out of sight of land they rushed on deck in a body and attacked the crew.

They were surrounded and driven below, but at night they broke out again, and rushed the officers' quarters. The crew armed themselves with revolvers, and a'tierce light raged for over an hour. Two of the mutineers were killed, a number were wounded, and four sailors were badly hurt. At last the pirates were drive into the fo'c'sle, and while the crew stood guard the vessel steamed hard for Algiers, where the police took the ruffians into custody. Pirates, as these instances prove, usually get the worst of it. But not nlwaj'*. Just three years ago the steamer Sophia was crossing the Black Sea from Odessa to Korthion, and the captain and passengers had just sat down to supper in the saloon when three young men, masked and armed, appeared at the doorway, and covered them, bidding them not to move on pain of eath.

At the same time two others seized the man at the wheel, and forced him to turn the vessel back to Odessa. Others —there -were eighteen in all—opened the safe, and took out £SOOO, the property of a Russian bank. They then robbed | the. passengers of all they possessed, disabled the engines, destroyed one boat, and, taking the other two, escaped. Chinese waters arc still notoriously unsafe. The British steamer Sainam was raided near Hongkong in July, 1900,.by a gang of desperadoes, who had shipped as passengers. Three Europeans, Captain Joslin, Dr. Macdonald, and another, held the saloon for a time. Captain Joslin was wounded, and lay for dead, Dr. Macdonald's brains were blown out, and the third managed to hide. The ship was looted, and her cargo carried off in five "snake boats." There is, or was a few months ago, still in use a Danish schooner named Emanuel, believed to be the oldest vessel afloat. She was built in 1'749, and for years sailed the Caribbean Sea under the I black flag.