SEA SERVICE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 201, 4 May 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

SEA SERVICE

THE HARD FATE OF A COMMAXDKR. "There arc many of the sou that the world know, very little about or, knowing, very soon forgets. These are ilip tragedies of the men whose lives have- been spent in the hard and exacting service which the sea demands, whose lons ."'sirs of toil and zeal and skill have brought the high responsibilities of command, and whose careers have been cut short by the fauit of an hour—yea, even by the error of a minute. The mistakes that doctors make are buried in the ground. Those made by law-years are paid bv their clients. But the mistakes of sea captains are paid for by themselves, and bitter is the price." With these words Walter Scott Meriwether commend a an interesting article in a recent issue of Munsey's Magazine. The writer says:— ' • Instances are plentv. There was the Pnnzcssin Victoria Louise, of the Ham-burg-American Line, which drove hard upon the coral beach at Port Royal, in the island of Jamaica. The vessel was thronged with tourists making a jaunt to the West Tndies. Fortunately, the sea was calm, and there was no difficulty in getting passengers ashore. When the last had been safely lamb d. the captain went to his stateroom and put a bullet through his brain. THE VTCTTM OF AX EARTHQUAKE. The pitiable part of it all was that he had no need to. Tt was not the brain he shattered that was at fault, but the Kingston earthquake, which bad destroyed the lighthouse. Groping for the same lighthouse, a few davs later, came another vessel of the same line—the' Prinz Waldemar. Her wreck lies a few hundred feet distant from that of her consort, mute testimony to the skill 'of the navigators. Ha<l the lighthouse been there, they would have found the passage; failing it. they found destruction. There will be many to recall the tragedy of the Oder, a North German Lloyd steamer, which was on her way back'to her home port in Bremen when she struck on the island of Socotra, at the entrance to the Red Sea. It was with difficulty 'that the passengers were rescued After all had been 20 t ashore, Captain Pfeiffer shot himself. The shin was lost. Although I had followed the sea for many years, it was not until I had left the navy to take up newspaper work that the full size and meaning of this, unwritten law. as it applies to'the merchant marine and its master mariners i came home with full force. This was in 1892, when as a newcomer into the news- i paper field. I was covering Ship News i for the New York Times. j There came to me. one day. an idea about a special article descriptive of shipwrecks, and chance led me to a Cunarder. the old Servia. then under the command of Captain Dutton. and long since gone the way of her betters. Jo the veteran captain T. in all innocence, told of my quest of knowledge concerning shipwrecks. an d. having made the announcement . blandly awaited the expected information. ' ' The captain had bit off the end of a I cigar, and was reaching for a match. He paused, and I thought he would explode. "Shipwrecks!" he roared. "What in I thunder do I know about shipwrecks?" It took many minutes to modify the I irate commander, and to explain that T| had forgotten, or had never known, that! he was a captain of a line of which it I used to be said that it "carried no napkins, but never lost a life." Eventually he unbent, but he could tell me nothing about shuiwrecks. " .' ''For if T could." he explained. "J would j not be here." J T did not write any story about ship, wrecks that day. but I can recall his ' mentioning several instances of captains m other lines whose high-nearted hopes had gone all to smash in a minute, their repntations wrecked if their ships were not A el7 true it is that most sea stories are sea tragedies. It may be said of captains, as it has been said of j nations, that happy are thev that have no history. Many of those who have had histories you may now find ending their lives in obscure employment, or in cottages on Long Island, or in Bremen Glasgow or Liverpool-victims of the mistake of a moment or of an hour, which the record of years of skill and devotion could not avail to overcome. Many more have subscribed to the merciless maxim t\at i he captain who loses his ship must not I himself survive. MEN WHO SANK WITH THEIR SHIPS. Captain Griffith, of the Moheo-an stood on the bridge of his fast sinking ship until the waters engulfed him De" loncle. of the French liner Bour«o<me sank in mid-Ala ntie by collision" with the British steamer Cromartyshire was last seen on the bridge, with hand on whistle-cord, as his vessel took the long dive. Von Goessel. of the Elbe, went down with his ship, standing with folded arms upon the bridge as the vessel slowly sank. One of the saddest tragedies of'the sea was the wreck of the British steamship Wairarapa, which went ashore on Great Barrier Island while on a voyage front Sydney to New Zealand. \s' the vessel neared the entrance to the harbor of Auckland a thick fog shut in aptain M'Tntosh, who commanded her had been many vears in the servic- of the line, and was reputed' to be verv careful and capable: but while the steamer was groping her wav thro h the mist, it was noted that he was exceedingly nervous and depressed. When night came, the fog was so thick that the lookouts could not see halt a ship's length ahead. A few minutes after midnight there was a sudden crash which laid the steamship almost on her beam owls, disabling all the boats on the careened side. Captain Mlntosh was on the bridge at the time. A o-reat wound which had been torn in the"vessel s side showed the extent of the disaster. As soon as he realised that his ship must become a total loss the captain strode to the end of the bridge and exclaiming ■•This is the last watch!'" plumted overboard to his death. When daylight came, it was seen that the vessel was in a cove, with precipitous cliffs rising several hundred feet against which the landward roaring surges roared and broke in acres of foam Under the pounding of the seas, the doomed vessel rapidly went to pieces, and of the one hundred and eighty souls that she carried only a scant' remnant was saved.

THE LOSS OF THE DUCW DUNBAR. Even more tragic was the loss of the Duncan Dunbar, another vessel in the Sydney trade. The ship, a finely-appoin-ted nne, \va« the favorite one of the line, and was bringing back to their Sydney homes a fair and gracious company of mothers and daughters—daughters 'who had been attending schools in England, and the mothers who had accompanied them, including the crew, the ship carried two hundred, people. When the noon observations showed that she would roach, her port that evening, the happy passengers busied themselves with preparations for departure, the young women putting on their finery, for all knew that the sighting of the ship would be signalled, and that all Sydney would be awaiting their arrival. The spacious harbor of Sydney is shut in hehind a precipitous wall which

exhibits no broach to those sailing' past it. The coastline is such that Captain Cook, in 1770. sailed past without knowing that there was an opening. Xear the true : entrance, is a false on;'. Darkness hat) fallen before tile Dunbar arrived (iff the port, and under any other circumstances the captain would' doubtless have hove to and waited for daylight. But it seems that he did riot have the heart to disappoint his fair passengers; and having steered his ship through the entrance seventeen times before, he thought he knew the way. The ship stood in—to her doom. The false entrance was mistaken for the true one, and on the rocks at the foot of a great precipice the Dunbar struck and was dashed to pieces. Of the two hundred men and women that she carried only one was saved.

This was one of the seamen. A wave had tossed him up the face of the rocks, and had lodged him on a.narrow ledge.' There he might have perished as miserably as the rest, had not the news of the disaster blackened the overhanging cliffs with the grief-stricken of Sydney. One of these, leaning far over the preeipic, saw the sailor periously clinging to the narrow .shelf where the wave had landed him. Ropes were brought, and the one lone survivor of the heart-breaking tragedy was rescued after incredible efforts. The foregoing deals only with a few cases in the merchant marine, but there have also been many sea tragedies in which the Navy men'have figured. The one that first comes to mind is the sinking of the battleship Victoria, flagship of England's Mediterranean fleet, by the Camperdown. on 22nd June. 1803. Nothing more finely illustrative of the usages of the sea was ever produced than was the testimony brought out in the court martial that ensued. From the Victoria. Vice-Admiral Tyron had signalled the order for the now famous "gridiron" movement, by which the squadrons, steaming in parallel columns a short distance apart, were to turn inward. "At the time the signal was made," Captain Bourke was asked, "did you believe that it would involve distster?" "I did," he replied. "Had yon been positively certain, would you have obeved it?"

"I certainly would." , "Why?" "Because it is no business of a junior to que-lion the orders of ;i superior." Tyron. who had given the order, went down with the sinking Victoria, as did four hundred and thirty of the crew. As the vessel dipped under, he was heard to sav: "It'is all niv fault!"