MEN WHO GO DOWN TO THE SEA

Radio Record, 27 May 1938, Page 10

MEN WHO GO DOWN TO THE SEA

QHE was called Antiope and she was built in 1865 for Joseph Heap and Sons, of Liverpool, for the rice trade. She made her first voyage to Melbourne in 65 days, under Captain Withers, after being becalmed ou the Line for 10 days. "Which shows what she could do," said Mr. Renner, "when you think that the Thermopylae, the ship that held the record from London to Melbourne, took 63 days. GH had a variety of experiences. She was captured by the Japanese when under the Russian flag in the RussoJapanese War. When she was. bound for Bluff from Newcastle in 1913 she went ashore at Port Chalmers and lay on the rocks for two years, until an inquisitive reporter was out seeing her one day and found out where the hole was. Largely through his observation, she was refloated, and recommis- | sioned again in 1915 for the Otago Rolling Mills. One of Her Apprentices TRANCIS M. RENNER, aged 14, went with her as one of the apprentices, "Why?’? I asked again, "Well," said Mr. Renner, "my father was the first aldest son in our family who hadn’t gone to sea for something like seve or eight generations." The tug of the generations. qr would have been queer if he hadi’t youe tu seu He left Wellington under Captain James Broadhouse bound for Suva in ballast. They loaded copra there and went Home round the Horn. It wasn’t luxury touring on those journeys round the Horn. There was that time they struck the black cyclone off Rio, the pampero cyclone, bred inland, that swept dust, sand and insects out to the ship and blew a really dangervous wind. "We had shortened sail, but she threw the ship on to her beam-ends so fiercely that we were thrown out of our bunks." There was that time they ran vub of potatoes hetween Suva and the Horn, and all they had for 70 days was pork and beans. Hashed for breakfast, boiled for dinner, baked for tea. . . rae Antiope arrived in the English Ulanuel aud wus taken in tow to Rotterdam. She was put in dry dock there, and the youngster Renner saw the remarkable durability of iron as against steel. The ship had been built for uver 50 years, and her bottom plates right up to the waterline were absolutely solid. They showed no sign of rusf

or erosion. The youngster took a boat and paddled round the ship to study her. The hull was sound, but on the waterline he saw a number of small holes, particularly at the bow of the vessel Going round the ship he twice put the hoathook through the ship’s plates between the wind and water-line, HEY left Rotterdam for Viborg in Finland, sailing up into the Baltie. But at Stockholm the ship was advised that the Gulf of Finland was full of mines and that they would have to tow from there to Viborg, ‘This was in 1917, the year of war. From Viborg they sailed off for Delagoa Bay, and while there the youngster deserted and stowed away with uw friend on the American ship Luke Gratis. "An extraordinarily cranky vessel," said Mr. Renner, "built by the mile and cut off by the yard. She was one of those built by the U.S.A. to capture world trade during the war?

"HIE phrase, "a cranky" ship, reminded me of something that IT wanted to ask him. Did ships really have those human, and sometimes inhuman, traits? The former sailor had no doubt about it. There was one ship that would balk, he remembered. The skipper was trying to get the ship to come about going up a narrow sound in the face of a head wind. She refused to come about, she missed her stays every time. Until by chance when a young apprentice took the wheel, the ship went round. Every time the boy went to the wheel there was no chance of the ship missing her stays. Aud there were some ships well known as munkillers. Others never lost a man. The Thermopylae never lost one, and the Cutty Sark only one, and that through no

fault of hers. Ships had their ways, all right.. Stowaways HE Lake Gratis had « eargo of pitprops for the mines in Sunderland, While the two young stowaways were in hiding on deck the ship took a toss in the North Sea and fell to a list of 87 degrees. All the deck cargo went overboard and the stowaways quickly came out of their hiding-place. They avoided jail at Sunderlaud for stowing awuy and were offered jobs by the skipper of the Gratis at £20 4 month. Luxury, indeed, for on the Antiope, as apprentices, they had gof only 18/4 a month. HEN began a series of voyages all over the world for Francis Renner. He was in the States for a time, including seven days "on the beach" (out of work) in New York; trips to the Hast in the City of Hankow: and a call at Delagoa, Bay. in which he saw again the old (Contd. on p. 48.)

Down To The Sea

HE HAS NO REGRETS (Continued from page 10). "Antiope," burned in a fire and abandoned now to the underwriters; a fall of 86 feet down an uncovered hatch and a lucky escape from death through having his fall broken by a heap of rubbish; journeys to Caleutta,. Madras and Ceylon; the memory .of loading coal by baskets at Perim while the ship lay head to the wind and got blackened with coal dust from stem to stern; return to New York, and at last a voyage home to New Zealand as quartermaster in the City of Chester. Even then, after a short time ashore, the sea called again and he set off as quartermaster in the Port Albany under Captain Fishwick. Until at last the sea let him alone, and he came back to land. HE never regrets his seafaring. "It gives a sense of values to a young man tlrat he never loses in after life,’ says Francis Renner to-day. ."It teaches him the great lesson in the finish that he is after all the master of his own destiny. "It lets him know that there are few things in this world on which a man can rely other than his own initiative and his ewn ability and his own perseverance. "When the boy goes to sea from the background of a good home, kind parents and his friends, he finds it is up to himself to make his own way. If every young man could face life that way early in his existence, it would be muebh to his good."