A HELPLESS GENIUS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 115, 4 November 1911, Page 2 (Supplement)

A HELPLESS GENIUS.

OUR GREATEST NAVAL DESIGNER. How to build the latest yacht in the world though blind? John Brown HerreshofT, of Bristol, R. 1., has solved that problem. How to build the mightiest Dreadnought in the world, though a paralytic? Arnold F. Hills, head of the Thames Ironworks, England, has solved this one.

These two men to-day stand foremost in their special development of seafaring craft (says the New York World), though HerreshofT has not seen a ray of light for the last fifty-nine years, and Hills cannot lift a hand, far less walk. But HerreshofT has designed some of the great American yachts which have kept the America Cup in this country, and Hills has just launched his great battleship Thunderer on the banks of the Thames, viewing the inspiring sight from his invalid's chair.

At the age of fifteen your HerreshofT became totally blind. Yet for fifty years he has been able to tell of hosts and engines as if he could really see these creatures of his teeming brain. It was he who designed the first torpedo boat for Uncle Sam. She was the privatelyowned Vamoose first, then she became the Stiletto. He designed the crack Cloriana and the Navahoc, and the Cup defenders, Vigilant, Columbia and Reliance. Hundreds of swift boats have been moulded beneath his skilful hands.

The Herreshoffs get the highest prices for their boats, and for cup defenders they get far more than for an ordinary yacht. When such a boat is in the planning HerreshofT sometimes sits for days rubbing his hands lightly over the model just to get a perfect picture of the boat in his mind. Many changes suggest themselves to him, and he works them out with mathematical precision. ALMOST A SUPERMAN. Now to that other handicapped builder of ships, Hill. You may see him any morning in that melancholy little procession of invalids in their rolling chairs at Eastbourne. Most of them are listless and apathetic; not so Mr. Hills. He has not resigned himself to the inevitable yet.

This man of force and resolution comes along the esplanade lying at full length on his invalid chair, with white upturned face, unable to move hand or limb. In all the company of invalids there is no man so helpless as he. He cannot raise a glass of water to his lips. For the most trivial service he is dependent upon others. He cannot raise a . finger to support a book or write a letter. The coverlet of his wheeled chair' reaches to his chin, and beneath it his arms lie .stiff and motionless by his side. He cannot life his' head, but the disease that has gripped his limbs and locked his joints has not affected his speech, nor clouded his vision, nor clogged the workings of his brain, nor dimmed his memory. And, most wonderful of all, the oppression of his long and terrible affliction has not borne down courage or will nor faded his interest in life. His range of the world is limited to the little distance that the attendant who sturdily wheels his chain can cover in au hour or two, yet he is part of all that is going on in the world. He cannot lift a sheet of paper to his eyes; still there is no book of note published that he does not read, and no important item of news in the'papers that he has not noted. He cannot hold a pen, yet by the help of secretaries he conducts an enormous correspondence. Music, poetry, art, literature, sicence, philosophy, politics —in every department . of intellectual activity he is up with the last word of progress. In 1878 a young Oxford undergraduate won the English mile championship in what was for the running paths of those days the splendid time of 4min 28 4-ssec. His name appears in the records as A. F. Hills. Motionless and supine in his wheeled bed, the same A. F. Hills is establishing an inconceivable championship record. In Poplar and Canning Town, East and West Ham, Woolwich, and many other parts of the. East End of London, many thousands of working people depend for the daily subsistence upon the efforts of this champion athlete. It was the same A. F. Hills who supervised the building of the great Thames Dreadnought Thunderer, and triumphantly launched her a short while ago.