CAPTAINS ON THE SEA.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 February 1916, Page 5

CAPTAINS ON THE SEA.

TRUE STORIES' OF MASTERS OF GREAT SHIPS.' (By Harold A. Uttledalc, in New York livening Post). When the great war burst upon an amazed world no set of men trailed for peaceful employment were mora needed by their separate Governments for special service than the commanders of the trans-Atlantic liners. 'For one tiling, thousands of troops had to be conveyed, and the liners, hurriedly made over into transports, were used for this purpose. They ran from the Hebrides to > the Horn. They took on colonials from Canada, from Australia, from 'Xew Zealand. They shipped bearded, turbaned Indians from the ports of Hindustan, and white-robed tribesmen from Morocco. They plied between Chinese coast towns and Tsing-tao, and tliey carried detachments of soldiers and great stores of supplies from widely-scattered settlements to the nearest base of operations. Xor was this all. Some of the liners were transformed into scout ships. The Kronprinz Wilhelm, then tied up at her pier at Hoboken, painted a war grey, slipped out to sea one night with guns mounted for'ard of her bridge and more guns sticking out astern. The ICaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, hastily armed, dropped down the African coast and did efficient work as a commerce destroyer until a British cruiser sank lier. Some of the men to whom this work fell had already served as naval officers. Most of them had gone through strange adventure. All of them were brave. There was Dempwolf, for instance, who lived like Robinson Crusoe; or E'lier, who sailed a sinking' ship to port; or Prehn, who saved the life of a baby while his ship pounded to pieces beneath his feet; or Smith, who played .ludc-aiul-sevk with cannibals; or Barman, who came to life after being dead.

Probably wou will smile at the thought of Barman rising from the brink of the grave to forbid his own funeral. It was quite unconventional. The proper thing, of course, would have been for him to remain dead, but Barman liked life, and so he resurrected himself, to the very great horror of the man who was prepared to commit his body to the deep.

RECALLED TO LIFE. Barman was sixteen years old at the time, but every inch a sailor for all the down upon his cheeks. He had been at sea for two years and ranged as an A.B. on the three-masted Norwegian schooner Thor. To-day he is captain of the steamship Finland, usually running between New York and Antwerp, but in the Mediterranean service since the war began. The Thor plied between Riga and London. She carried only a small crew, and on this voyage, because of the severity of the winter, the quarters of the I crew were changed from the fo'castle, which was unheated, to a room adjoining the galley, into which heat from the galley stove filtered through a scuttle in the dividing partition. The late November morning, when the Thor's mate went below to call out the watcsh at 3.45 a.m., he found the bo'sun, Barman, and another ablebodied seaman stretched out unconscious on the floor. They had been overcome by the coal-gas fumes from the galley stove. Barman was given up for dead. The two others had quickly revived under the rough treatment of the mate, but no amount of rubbing took the stiffness out of Barman's limbs or the death-pallor from his cheeks. And so he was respectfully carried out on. a plank and laid on a hatch, and a piece of tarpaulin was thrown over him. Ice hung from the rigging of the Thor and the cold wind whistled overhead. That Barman did not freeze to death was a miracle. Instead he began slowly to regain consciousness with the dawning day. By 8 o'clock he had partly recovered his sense, but not strength enough to move his limbs, or open his eyes, or use his tongue. He continued to lie there, like one dead. About 8.30 he heard footsteps on the deck, thep the voices of two men. First the mate:

"He liad the makings of a good seaman, capt'n!" Then the captain: "Yes, poor kid; but he'e gone now, and the best we can do is to give him a deadweight of iron to keep him company and heave him overboard."

And then the mate's voice once more: "Why not give him a Christian burial, skipper? We'll make Copenhagen in two hours and he'll be good cargo for a cemetery." A pause, broken at last by the captain's voice:

"All right! We'll take him into -port. Have the flag lowered to half-mast." Within an hour young Barman was able to move. The conversation had accelerated his recovery. He took 110 chance. He raised himself on one elbow and tried to speak, but words failed him. Instead, a harsh, guttural sound came from his throat, and the mate, standing near-by, turned round.

"Suffarin' bobstays," the mate exclaimed. and shaking his fist at the "corpse" said: "Hey, kid, you're dead." But Barman smiled a sickly kind of a smile; and when he was able to stagger to his feet lie walked aft and raised to the masthead the flag that fluttered at half-mast. THE EYELESS JUNK. Sailors are superstitious. This is so the world over. It has been so since man discovered that wood floated upon water and fashioned the first boat. In the beginning figureheads were the images of gods, then of saints, and lastly of sea heroes. Curiously, Chinese junks bear t.wo glaring eyes upon their bows, and if you were to ask a Chinese sailor the reason for this he would answer in his pidgin-English: "No have eyes, how see? No see, how go?" That much having been set forth, you will now understand that it was because the lowpo Jim, a Chinese ship, did not bear the conventional two eyes that she snapped her mooring chains and bumped ashore in a stiff nor'-wester.

The Lowpo Jim, with a cargo of Oriental goods, was bound for New York from Chinese ports in the spring of 187S, when she was driven ashore near Sant' Anna, on the coast of Mexico. Four other ahip3 were blown ashore within half a mile of the Lowpo Jim, and not one of them stood up beneath the breakers that pounded hard upon their decks. It was a sandy beach, and the Lowpe Jim was driven bow on. All that niglit great waves swept her fore and aft, smashing her boats and leaving her crew helpless. The crew numbered twelve, but the captain was accompanied by his wife and child. The latter, an infant of six months, had been born at sea. The chief officer was Edward! Prehn, who last commanded the ocean, liner Prinz Friedrieh V :,, '<;lm. It was for the safety of bis wife and. child that Captain Buck was chiefly concerned. He ordered one of the crew o remain constantly with them uptil

morning:, when life-navel's from succeeded in reaching the side of tihjH stranded ship. The sea was still jrongjfc'A and only by careful navigating could tbjfl 1 ' lifeboat approach. It was brought im» . der the jiboom, and the captain's vHf# jumped and landed safely. Then tke work of trying: to rave the infant WM begun. Once more the pitching lifebofct ' t was brought under the bow, but just At j Captain Buck was about to throw the : j baby to one of the life-savers, the cockle- * shell bobbed away and it vu game tine . <| before slie was again brought alongside. > .■ Meantime Captain Buck and Mate 'Proha - : wrapped the crying infant in a CUWM hammock. Then they crayled along the ■.<: jibboom, and when the lifeboat again

ame.underneath their feet they lowtr*4 -he end of the hammock and one of tils men in the boat reached iqi and gw»p*4 * it safely. One by one the crew of ths , ' f-owjio Jim dropped into the lifeboat* , and by noon all were safely landed !' Sant' Anna, a quaint Mexican ftlkiM I ' village, in a j)artieularly isolated pWt I > of the coast. For three months Cap til**' Buck, his wife and child, and Prelm M(S, v's the crew remained there, waiting in 6; ship to appear; but none came, and tr j \ June, tired of waiting longer, they ill* entered an open boat and rowed «OVMfa» miles up the coast to a port from trfcUur a steamer sailed once a month. Tlttt? . steamer landed them in the West TnfllWj | where they were picked up, by Wirt ; liner and brought to New York, tf I SAILING A OEEEUCT/

For castaway mariners to be fJESfcjl up by a passing steamer is not QiMmM mon in these, days; but for a ed crew to be cast almost oq bpacl 4rii abandoned vessel, which they fittea Jrttftj ■ and in which they sailed away, utV W, . bend more to fiction than to iaof. ®et>' that is exactly what happened it> th». crew of the schooner Amanda, wncUA' in the late 'seventies in tlie-Guli^ef ; Mexico. . s The Amanda, a German hard for life in the teeth of a hurricani, , but to no end, for finally s'HB apranfTfc v leak and slowly filled and sanL IMS; crew manned tbo pumps until she w«l.' awash. Then they took to the lonft boat, and only in the nick of time, fot they had hardly cleared the water-toil* ged schooner when she went domw While the hurricane raited the ldtigboal was at the mercy of the waves, And tbt| crew had nil they could do to ktop *"* head on to the sea. They had succeeds od in saving only a few provisions, in* eluding a little water, and these, although scantily doled out, were soon exhausted. Fortunately, on the following day they rode into the Lagoona de Ter», minau, and here, to their amazement) they found an abandoned French barque, the Ker-Aiinee. She was stili afloat " i and in deep water, but she had been dit> masted, and most of her sails wen gone. Unseaworthy though she was, tin Ker-Aimec was the only hope of the Amanda's crew, and under the direction of the schooner's captain and of Firit Mate Froelich, the men set to work to put her in repair. Sailor-like, thas patched the sails, and with tough vino' th« coarse three Jibrea they strengthened the half-rotted ropes. ■' j It was a strange crew tli&t finally Mt the Ker-Aimee against the broad M- } lantic. They numbered eight dlffwwrt nationalities; but they had all been tried nnd none found wanting, and wHh willing hands they spread the doubtful canvas and so worked the ship. Ron* ning before favorable winds, they Bid* , •. good headway up the but loulh of the Newfoundland banks they toil < their rubber and their mizzenmaat, in t, ' storm that could have done no damaM had not the KeivAimee !>een a patch- - up ship. Nevertheless, with "lit aMiitanot \ they worked the Ker-Aimse into Boaton. There she was repaired and frott there' she later set sail for HambuiJ, ' crossing the Atlantic without (ncidei% In Hamburg she was broken up. Until that adventure Froelich ha 4 v been sailing all over the face of tIM ; globe, in windjammers, but after ■' receiving his master's papers, he enter- T ed the passenger service, and when tw war came he was captain of the Grtjf J Waldersee. He went to sea at the aft of sixteen, and the following year found him in the thick of the Franco-Prat* sian war, for while eftbin boy on tkt •'! G. F. Vorwerk he was captured by the * French and made a prisoner of Wat. \| Twice he has faced the terrors of ftffc/'iif on board ship—once at sea, when in 1899 the Patria caught fire in the North Sea, all the passengers and «rew being, saved, and again in the fire that de- ''*> stroyed the steamship piers and several f vessels in Hoboken. '»« h «

•BEAM-ENDS OFF CAPE HORN. Imagine the house in which you lln :il suddenly cast over upon its side v and then heaved up and down so violently by an earthquake that you could not make your escape, and you, though ao 1 arrant landsman, may still get a faint idea of what it means to be In « 3 that is thrown on her beam-ends. TIIO J beams of a vessel run thwartship fja landlubber talk crosswise), and-a vesi#! on her beam-ends lies on one side or tho ' other. It might happen to anv ship, for the worst of storms will shift tUo • best stowed-away cargo, and a shifting cargo takes a vessel off an even keel. .■

Just such an experience happened to Captain John Black, commander of tlra 1 Anchor liner Columbia. It was July, 1872, and Black was second officer of the Arden Connel, a full-rigged shin, bound from Port Broughton, Australia, to Queenstown, Ireland, with a cargo ol wheat. OfT the Horn she ran into thick weather and such heavy seas that sho was swept from stem to stern. Everything movable was ripped off, from tbs wheel to the poop-dock houses, an u last her cargo shifted and she settled , oil her beam-ends. As she went c.er on her side one of the apprentice b-'v fell into the sea. Black saw him swim* ming there, an:l, climbing into the ringing, saved him. The ship's cook r.-d the petty officers barely escaped wltH their lives. They were imprisoned In • the deck house in which they slept, for when the ship turned over this hou.d became submerged, and the men had i.-j means of escape until a bulkhead wai cut a,way, when they were dragged out. For. forty-eight hours the Arden Cornel remained ou her beam-ends and the storm raged. In all that time the crew had only dry biscuit and a little beet to eat, but they worked without stop to try to right the ship. At last their feet became ho swollen by being constantly in salt water that they had to' cut away their hoots. Sack after ikcls the wheat was thrown overboarda, until at last 150 tons had been cast into tlio sea. Then the ship righted herself And she was sailed safely to port, taking seven months for a trip that the could make in less than half that time ffitV favorable weather. " • j