"NINE TO ONE AGAINST."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 318, 6 July 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

"NINE TO ONE AGAINST."

LOST SHIPS THAT HAVE RETURNED. The news from Bermuda that the British steamer Eichmond, after being towed 460 nautical miles by the steamer Cundall, has arrived safely at that port, is an event of much interest at Lloyd's. The Richmond will go down to posterity as one of the very few vessels which, having been quoted at over 90 per cent., have subsequently turned up safe and I sound. From first to last the number of such occurrences could probably be counted on the fingers of two hands. Some of the most thrilling and romantic stories of the seas are those about ships which, for one reason or another, have been delayed for an extraordinary time at sea. What, for instance, is a mere landlubber to think of a vessel, sailing an ordinary trade routs, which disappears so completely as not to be seen by any other ship or even sighted from a signal station for the amazing period of seven months? Yet that is what has happened to the four-masted sailing ship Afghanistan. In December, 1900, she left San Francisco for Liverpool, and nothing was seen or heard of her until one Sunday night in the July following, when she cast anchor in the Mersey. The first stage of her journey—that to Cape Horn—is usually considered a lonely one, but to round the "Cape of Storms" without hearing a cry of "Sail, ho!" is most unusual. Off the River Plate, too, is a crowded locality. But the greatest mystery of all is how she possibly managed to cross the "doldrums"—that area of calms wherein dozens of sailing vessels are usually found huddled together, idle as painted ships upon a painted ocean, without being spoken to or speaking. Such "silent voyages," however— ( though, of course, very exceptional—are by no means unique. Indeed, on one occasion a vessel was actually on the eve of being twice "posted" at Lloyd's during one trip, and yet turned up safe and sound in the end. The name of the craft in question was the Pym, and the voyage was from the United States to Japan. She took five and a-half months to reach the Straits of Anjer, and was neither seen nor spoken to by any other ' ship in the meantime. Consequently, the J premiums advanced to something like 60 • per cent. j Curiously enough, a precisely similar | state of affairs prevailed during the sec- ( ond and concluding stage of her journey. 1 Nothing was seen or heard of her for a J further period of nearly six months, and > the premiums again soared upwards— j this time to close upon 70 per cent. — I when she, for a second time, falsified all I predictions and expectations by arriving very battered and weather-worn, but in j sound and seaworthy condition, at her destination.

On the second occasion, as on the first, j the notice was actually written out, I ready for display at Lloyd's, and would have been on the fateful board in an- I other few minutes, when the news of her safe arrival came flashing over the wires. ' What this means, how completely hope , had been abandoned by the underwriters, may be understood by the lay reader I when it is stated that there exists no single recorded instance of a ship once "posted" being afterwards reported safe. In some respects, especially from the premium point of view, the case of the barque Memory was an even more re- * markable one. Seven or eight years ago, after a terrible voyage, she arrived at Fleetwood, all battered and leaking, but still above water. Practically all hope had been given up, as may be judged from the fact that £9O was the premium paid to reinsure each £IOO value of her cargo. She had been assailed by terrific storms in crossing the Atlantic. A series of hurricanes carried away part of the bul- : warks, and so often was the deck submerged that the pumps could not be worked, in spite of a liberal use of oil. She became water-logged, and her crew had to take refuge in the rigging, abandoning hope. For the last eight days of the voyage the crew were without food almost, yet the good ship managed to live to be towed into port by a tug. Very thrilling, not to say gruesome, is the story of the Knightsbridge, long overdue, and given up as lost three times, abandoned by two crews in succession, yet brought safely into port at last. She was first sighted in the Indian Ocean, on fire, and partly out of her course, by the British Sceptre, who sent a boat to ascertain whether any assistance could be rendered. She appeared derelict, for » no answer was returned to any amount of hailing, so the Sceptre's boat's crew boarded her, to find that the sailors, after fighting the flames for ten days, had given it up as a bad job and broken into the spirit room. The captain, in sheer desperation, so he said afterwards, had followed suit, after first battening down the hatches, and there, sprawling in various uncouth attitudes about the poop deck, were the whole batch of them in a drunken sleep. On being aroused, the drink-maddened men attacked their would-be keepers, whom they regarded as intruders, and a terrific melee ensued, ending in the Knightsbridge's crew being overpowered, triced up man by man, pitched into the boats, and carried aboard the British i Sceptre. A salvage crew of volunteers was then placed on 'board the burning vessel, and they, in their turn, fought the flames and navigated the vessel for ten more weary days, at the end of which time, thinking she was doomed, they in their turn abandoned her. Weeks after she was boarded again by a crew from a French barque, but in the meantime she must have fallen in with some other ship, for the flames had been subdued, and, moreover, the Frenchmen found on board of her the charred body of a man who certainly did not belong to either her original crew or the salvage crew placed on her by the British Sceptre. She was eventually towed into Rangoon, and an enquiry was held, but the mystery was never solved.