THE LITTLE SHIPS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 49, 27 February 1935, Page 6

THE LITTLE SHIPS.

HARDY COOK STRAIT TRADERS.

(By J.C.)

A schooner-rigged craft came running- into port under staysail and reefed foresail before the southerly gale that roared up through the funnel of the heads. Sometimes a rain squall half hid her from view, and gave her an extra kick along towards the wharves. I watched her through the binoculars from a window four hundred odd feet above- Wellington Harbour, and recognised her from that distance as our hardest worked little ship, the scow Echo, tho busiest craft that uses the often stormy waters of Cook Strait for her daily thoroughfare. There are half a dozen of theso ex-Auckland scows and schooners plying in and out of Wellington, helping in the fetch-and-carry business of the two islands, linking the capital port with Nelson and the Marlborough Sounds and Blenheim. Tho auxiliary motor has given the small sailing vessels a new lease of life; they are economical to run; the engine and screw enable- them to save- timein working the ports and rivers. Tho Talisman, the Kohi, the Huanui, To Aroha, Ngahau, and now and again the Moa (of Von Luckner and Kermad.ee Islands fame), they all help to give a touch of tho old white wings to the Lambton waterfront. Moet of them use the winds for their motive power in the open sea, but work in and out of the rocky beads under their engines. But the Echo is tho most consistent sail-user of them all. A southerly brings her in flying; she makes the northerly a leading wind in and out; she comes ghosting in on the tide with all sail set when there is hardly a breath of wind. Every wind seems a fair wind for some ships, and the E-cho is one of them.

Even tho trans Strait ferry steamers are not busier than the 125-ton Echo. She keeps the direct trade going between Wellington and Blenheim town, working the Wairau bar. Night and d;iy are alike to her skipper and crow on the Wairau Kivcr. Her eye is a powerful electric light on her foremast. The tidal river waters, between willow banks, like the lower Waikato, take her right into Blenheim town through the most beautiful of farm lands. She makes three and sometimes four trips, each way in the week. She is in. Wellington in the .morning and by dark is often half way across Cook Strait again. If her master and crew get good money they earn it all; for keeping a regular schedule in such a traffic in all kinds of weather is trying work.

1 fancy, looking at these industrious small craft that preserve the art of sail-handling from extinction in tho coastwise trade, that the souls of the little ships must sometimes cast a longing look back to the Waitemata and the Hauraki, the waters of their birth, where life was easier for them and where there were, no ferocious southerly busters to send them scurrying for shelter, and no Terawhiti tide rips to play rough and tumble with their timbers. The centreboard scow type was not built to wrestle with the butt-end of a sou"-wester or with the Cook Strait seas. They fly no kites here, those ex-Aueklanders that once hoisted tapering gaff-topeails and flying jib. They have lost their topmasts; sailors call them bald-headed schooners. Hardweather rig is theirs, mainsail and foresail and a couple of headsails. There is a reminder of the beautiful Auckland eoast for them, however, in the Pelorus Sound inlets and the bays between the French Pass and Nelson. Lightdraught craft arc needed for those creeks and in-and-out estuaries of Pelorus, where the winding sound is the settlers' thoroughfare.

Big ships, modern liners, even in these days of navigation made easy by many inventions, sometimes find it prudent to give Wellington Heads a wide berth. Our small friend, the Echo makes little of storm or fog; she comes ''nosing along," as the old Strait whalers say. Once she. came in through the heads bottom ■up, because of a slight miscalculation on the part of her crew, who nipped out in the lifeboat just in time; and there was Marlborough Plains produce scattered along the foreshore from Pencarrow to Petone. But she was off niraiii, repaired and as good as new, in a week or two; hard-working little tramp of windy Raukawa.