Sails beneath the Southern Cross

Eaddy, P. A. (Percy Allen), A.H. & A.W. Reed, Wellingtion, N.Z., 1954

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EPUB ISBN: 978-0-908327-52-2

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The original publication details are as follows:

Title: Sails beneath the Southern Cross

Author: Eaddy, P.A. (Percy Allen)

Published: A.H. & A.W. Reed, Wellington, N.Z., 1954

Sails Beneath the Southern Cross

BY THE SAME AUTHOR Hull Down

’Neath Swaying Spars

MANURE w a The iron barque Manurewa, originally named Vale Royal, was between two and three hundred tons register. She was lost at sea off the New South Wales coast in 192 i with all hands.

Sails Beneath the Southern Cross

By P. A. EADDY

Wellington

A. H. & A. W. REED

First published igs4

A. H. & A. W. REED

182 Wakefield Street

WELLINOTON

NEW ZEALAND

Set in 11 point Baskerville type Printed and Bound in Great Britain Bradford & Dickens London, W.C. 1

Author’s Note

the text of this book deals mainly with the old intercolonial sailing ships which were engaged in the timber trade between New Zealand and Australia. I have also made mention of the South Sea Island schooners and their trade among the Islands. Very soon now they will all have passed from living memory. Of the other ships and incidents of the old sailing ship days, I have delved into various sources of information whose authors I have acknowledged throughout this book, and to whom I wish to record my thanks. Likewise, to my many friends among the old sailing ship masters of Auckland, namely the late Captains William Ross, Peter Ewing, George Schutze, John Farrell, and many more who have passed on, and to old shipmates in sail, Captains Leonard Robertson, Geoff. Airey, Robt. Anderson, and many more, my sincere thanks are due. Last but not least I must thank the late Mr G. C. Codlin, former General Manager of the New Zealand Herald, the late Mr J. H. Kinnear, and the late Captain George Schutze, for permission to reproduce the photos of ships contained in this book. My thanks are also due to the Auckland Star for permission to include the account of the schooner race in the Auckland Regatta of 1884.

P. A. E A D D Y

Birkenhead

Auckland, N-Z-

To An Old Shipmate

Bent to the strain of constant pulley-hauling,

A rolling gait, in wind and limb all sound

Hands gnarled and hard, a voice all harsh with bawling

As sails were hoisted, or the yards swung round,

'Tis thus I see you once again, old shipmate,

When you and I crossed courses long ago.

And now you've gone the voyage we all must make

While I sit dreaming by the firelight glow.

I mind the time when I, as Boy was rated,

And you were Bosun, and a hard one too.

Your " Overhaul the buntlines " how I hated

That job aloft, when I was feeling blue.

And then, when shortening sail,

I heard your yell of " Footropes " and your cursing hard,

As slung to windward 'gainst the shrieking gale

I clung, and retched, from off the reeling yard,

But oh, the natty arts of sailorizing

You taught me in the dog-watch long ago,

The Turks-heads, four and five strand memorizing

And quaint cross-pointing, " Over, under, so."

I see you seated on the fore-hatch coamings,

The arching foot of foresail overhead,

The forefoot's steady snore and muttered moanings,

While you worked sailor puzzles with a thread.

But now you've squared your yards, my old sea-rover.

And under orders sealed, to ports unknown

You've set your course. The old days now are over,

The Cape Horn Albatross that long had flown

Behind your tracks in your long joumeyings;

You used to tell me he would carry you

When you passed on, and then still wandering

Your spirit would within him live anew.

P. A. EADDY

Contents

AUTHOR'S NOTE

page 5

1 The Port of Auckland 11

2 Early Shipping 15

3 Youth at the Helm 22

4 Sailing Coasters of Auckland 35

5 Island Schooners and Schooner Racing 44

6 Island Schooner Race in the Auckland Regatta, January 29, 1884 51

7 A South Sea Island Voyage in the Barquentine "Ysabel" 60

8 " Land Oh" 72

9 " Heave Away for Auckland" 80

10 Intercolonial Sailing Vessels 84

11 The Sea's Toll 102

12 The Barquentine "Neptune" 108

13 Sailors Ashore 120

14 Back to Sea Again 133

15 The Barque "Northern Chief" 139

16 The Barquentine "Southern Cross" 148

17 Various Ships 153

18 Deep-water Sailing 160

19 Conclusion 190

INDEX 193

Illustrations

manurewa frontispiece

royal tar feeing page 14

ALEXANDER CRAIG 14

EMPREZA 15

SENORITA 15

LOUISACRAIG 48

S T KI LD A 48

LAURA 49

MANUNUI 64

manu n u I {wrecked) 65

WAI-I T I 96

GANYMEDE 96

rothesaybay 97

H UI A 112

will watch and albatross 113

SOUTHERN CROSS II 113

Y S A B EL 144

SHENANDOAH 145

HANDA ISLE 160

Y s A be l at Sea 1 60

CARNARVON BAY 16l

Chapter i

The Port of Auckland

Among all the ports of the world the Port of Auckland has . always held first place in my regard by reason of the fact that I have known it since my earliest childhood. Back in the year 1883 the barque Clyde, a Shaw Savill ship, with Captain Hoyle in command, arrived from London after a passage of four months. She had left Gravesend early in the month of February and after a stormy passage through the Bay of Biscay she held fairly good weather until she began to run her easting down between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Leeuwin. On this stretch of her voyage she encountered gales of wind and high following seas, and on making Cape Otway, strong easterly gales prevented her from sailing through Bass Straits so she had to pass to the southward of Tasmania on her way to New Zealand. She made the coast of New Zealand off Cape Maria Van Diemen and was blown off the land for several days near Cape Brett. The Clyde let go her anchor in the Auckland Harbour on May 29, 1883.

She brought twenty-eight passengers. Among them was a toddler of one year of age. The writer of these lines had learned to walk on the barque's heaving decks during that four months' passage from England. I think that the irresistible call of the sea must have taken hold of me then, for right from my earliest recollection I have always loved the sea and ships. Heredity may have had a good deal to do with it also, as my father and grandfather were both connected with the sea in their business as ballasting, towing and lightering contractors at Rotherhithe and Deptford. It was at Rotherhithe that I first saw the light of day, in the days when Surrey Commercial Docks were crowded with sailing ships, with their long jibbooms reaching out over some of the narrow dockside streets. My grandfather's house stood in Lower Road near the Surrey Commercial Docks. It was here that the old man and his sons met and discussed their work among the ships and docks.

11

12

SAILS BENEATH THE SOUTHERN CROSS

The firm of John Eaddy and Sons also held shares in some of the Baltic timber traders. I always will remember with what pride my father spoke of their crack sailing barge Flying Horse, and of how on one occasion he took her to Saltash in Cornwall and back to London. “ She was one of the fastest on the London River in those days,” he was wont to say.

With Rotherhithe, Deptford and Greenwich always to the fore in family conversation during our first few years in New Zealand, it was no wonder that there was bred in me an early desire to go to sea. The first songs we children knew in those early days were the old sea chanties which my elder brother had learned on the voyage out in the Clyde, and it was to the tunes of “Blow the Man Down” and “Whisky Johnnie” that he would sing some of his younger brothers to sleep.

Soon after we arrived in Auckland we went to live at St Heliers Bay, which at that time had a long wooden wharf jutting out over the shallow flats to deep water. Here would come the old paddle-wheel ferry steamer Tongariro, which ran a regular service to and fro between the bay and town. Further along the beach towards town was Kohimaramara with all the sprawling buildings of the Melanesian Mission still standing, and on the eastern end of the beach now known as Mission Bay, was a large boatshed belonging to the Mission schooner Southern Cross. In it was stored spare gear, ropes, spars, and boats and chains. As small boys, how we revelled in peering through cracks in the walls and breathing in long draughts of air, fragrant with the smell of Stockholm tar and paint. The Mission buildings were at that time in use as a school for refractory boys under Mr Hogan, a very fine old gentleman. A creek ran in behind the large stone building on the western side of the bay, where a steam launch was kept for the use of the school.

On to this beach also came Captain James Biddick's crack sailing scow Vixen, then a new vessel, to unload cattle or sheep from small ports or islands round the Hauraki Gulf. The Vixen was the next sailing vessel after the barque Clyde in which I was destined to make a trip. The Government then in power in New Zealand was helping new settlers to take up undeveloped land in the far north of the Auckland Province, and my father,

THE PORT OF AUCKLAND

20

having put in for a section, was granted land near the small port of Herekino. The Vixen took us with all our belongings up to Auckland and we transferred from her to the coastal steamer Clansman.

I was too young to remember much about that trip, though I do remember calling at Russell and Mangonui, and then on to the river port of Awanui by the little steamer Staffa. Some of the settlers also went by schooner to Ahipara. From Awanui we went by waggon to Kaitaia, which was then, in 1886, a very small village populated mostly by Maoris. Our destination was Takahue Valley, about fifteen miles out towards the West Coast, and after a few day at Kaitaia, we were conveyed there by bullock sledges with all our luggage.

Takahue Valley in those days was virgin bush-land, and the first white settlers' homes were nikau whares erected by themselves with the help of friendly Maoris. Among my earliest recollection of those days were the bush-felling operations carried on by the menfolk of the small community of the valley. On our section were some large rimu and kauri trees upon whose stumps, when they were felled, we children used to play and pretend that we were again back on the deck of the Clyde.

The long rata vines swinging loosely from great trees overhanging some deep pool in the river also provided great fun during the summer, as we would swing out over the clear water, let go with a splash, and swim ashore, and repeat the performance over and over again. Those were happy days for the young folk living "up in the bush " as we called it. What did we care that there was no school for two years. Our mother gave us the elementary lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic. And when the small one-room school was built, what a time we had, pakeha and Maori children all playing happily together. Little did we care if sometimes we were packed off to school with huge boiled kumeras and cobs of corn for our lunch, for sometimes the tracks into Kaitaia were impassable owing to floods in the river and creeks during the winter, and it would be impossible for even pack-horses to be used to bring stores out to the settlers in Takahue Valley.

About the year 1891 our family moved back to Auckland. For the menfolk and most of the younger generation it was an

SAILS BENEATH THE SOUTHERN CROSS

21

ideal life at Takahue Valley. There was always an abundance of good food such as kumeras and corn, for all the settlers had gardens. There were plenty of wild pigs in the bush, and wild cattle also, but the life was too hard on many of the womenfolk, especially those with a lot of young children to bring up, and a year or so after our return to Auckland my mother died. My father went back to the sea for a living, and from then on, as a boy of 9 years of age, I began to take a real interest in the waterfront of Auckland. It was full of interest to the average boy in those days. How changed that same waterfront is to-day, with the extensive reclamations and numerous large concrete wharves all along the foreshore, instead of the little tidal bays and wooden wharves of 1891. What a change too in the ships that traded in these waters in those days. Auckland Harbour was crowded with sailing vessels of all sizes and rigs then. Shipbuilding was quite a big industry, and Aucklandbuilt schooners traded to all parts of the Pacific, while on the coast schooners, ketches, sailing-scows and small cutters visited every little settlement up and down the whole length of New Zealand. Mr N. R. McKenzie, in his book The Gael Fares Forth, mentions that at one time Captain D. H. MacKenzie, a descendant of the early Nova Scotian settlers of Waipu, North Auckland, owned as many as sixty sailing vessels, all registered at Auckland. The estuary of the Waitemata, or Auckland Harbour as it is now more commonly called, with a water frontage of one hundred and ninety-seven miles, and an average depth of from five to twelve fathoms, was an ideal place from which small ships could venture forth on their lawful occasions.

D'Urville, the French navigator, gave us the first chart of the extensive Waitemata or Auckland Harbour in 1827, and also the inner passages inside Rangitoto and Waiheke Islands. On Captain Cook's chart made in 1769-1770, no soundings are shown inside Point Rodney, Tiri Tiri Island, and Waiheke Island. Captain Hobson's first advice to mariners referred them to D'Urville's chart and words: " Undoubtedly, some day these channels will play a most important role in navigation." How true his words have been when we look back over the past years and note the rapid progress the port has made.

royal tar The Royal Tar was a wooden barque, 598 tons register, built in New South Wales in 1876. She was lost in November 1901 by striking Shearer Rock, outside Tiri Tiri Island, Hauraki Gulf, New Zealand. Her owners were J. J. Craig Ltd. of Auckland and the master was Captain F. Morrison.

ALEXANDER craig The Alexander Craig, ex Kathleen Hilda, was a wooden barque of 520 tons, built in Nova Scotia in 1891. She was in the intercolonial trade from 1892 to 1900 when she was hulked in Auckland. The author sailed in her under Captain W. Nagle.

senorita The Senorita was an iron barquentine oi 350 tons, built al Inverkeithing, Firth of Forth, Scotland, in 1893. Captain T. V. Hill, in later years commanding the Union Steam Ship Company's liners Niagara and Aorangi, served as second mate in the Senorita in the intercolonial trade.

i. \i i' re z a The Emprtza was a small barque of 236 tons, built at Govan in Scotland in 1865. She sailed for many years in the intercolonial trade and was registered at Auckland. She was hulked in 1910.

Chapter 2

Early Shipping

A thousand years ago brown-skinned Maori navigators swept southward in their great canoes and found New Zealand’s islands in the Southern Ocean. Another seven centuries passed before the Dutchman Abel Tasman rediscovered the Maori-inhabited country, but he did not land. Active European contact began with the exploratory journey of Captain James Cook, who investigated New Zealand thoroughly. In 1794 the brig Fancy loaded spars in the Firth of Thames for England, and four years later, 1798, the ship Hunter also loaded spars there for England. Two other vessels loaded spars for England at the Thames in 1801. They were the ships Plumier and Albion. Probably some of these same kauri spars were in use in some of Nelson’s ships at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. There was no European settlement at the Thames in those days, but there would have been safe anchorage at the head of the Thames for sailing ships. In later years, during the time I sailed in New Zealand timber traders between New Zealand and Australian p>orts, we often lay at anchor off the township of Thames awaiting a fair wind, after loading timber at either Bagnall’s or Gibbon’s mills higher up the river.

In 1836 the Bay of Islands was quite a large port as far as sailing ships were concerned, for in this year thirty-six whalers were anchored here at one time, and in 1838 fifty-six American whalers, twenty-four New South Wales ships, and six New Zealand ships visited Russell.

The sailing ships Eliza, Britannia and Albion loaded whale-oil in New Zealand waters for England in 1801. Again in 1802 the ships Speedy, Venus, and Britannia sailed from New Zealand to England loaded with whale-oil. Even in those early days, with cannibal natives ashore, men were known to desert their ships in New Zealand, though some were forcibly taken prisoner while ashore with their boats for wood and water. Thomas Maxwell left his ship and was the first white man to settle down on the

15

25

SAILS BENEATH THE SOUTHERN CROSS

shores of the Waitemata, by marrying a Maori chiefs daughter.

The ship St Patrick, Captain Dillon, loaded a cargo of spars for Calcutta at the Thames in 1826, and in the same year the ship Rosanna, Captain Herd, arrived in the Hauraki Gulf from England with fifty settlers aboard. Captain Herd bought the islands of Pakatoa, Rotoroa, Ponui, and Pakihi from the Maori owners. The following year, 1827, the Rosanna loaded kauri logs for Sydney, and was one of the first vessels to enter the intercolonial timber trade, which in after years kept so many of our sailing ships in constant employment. On September 13, 1840, the barque Platina from London, arrived at Auckland with building material for the first Government House in New Zealand. Three days later the barque Anna Watson arrived and carried as passengers the first Surveyor General for New Zealand and the first Harbour Master for Auckland, Captain David Rough. The Platina sailed into Auckland via the now little used channel between the islands of Waiheke and Motutapu. In the following year the barque Chelydra, brig Porter, brig Nimrod, and the schooner Sir John Franklin appear in columns of the Southern Cross newspaper, as running in the intercolonial trade between Auckland and Sydney. During the year 1850, the barque Clara, 360 tons, Captain Potter, arrived from London on March 25 after a passage of one hundred days. The Fairy Queen, Captain Doyle, arrived on July 9 from London one hundred and fifty days out. The Barbara Gordon, Captain Lilley, arrived on October 10 one hundred and forty-five days out from London, and the Camilla, 384 tons, Captain Pugh, arrived on December 12 after a passage of one hundred and fiftyfive days from London via Wellington.

In his book White Wings, Sir Henry Brett gives a wonderful account of the sailing ships which arrived in New Zealand ports from the very early days right up to the year 1885, when steamers then brought most of the passengers to New Zealand. From that year onwards not many passengers arrived in this country by sailing ship. The old wooden Queen Street wharf which was replaced by the ferro-concrete Queen’s wharf was one of the young city’s promenades on any sunny Sunday afternoon during the 1880s-1890s, and no wonder, for alongside it would be berthed many of the world’s finest sailing ships during those

26

EARLY SHIPPING

years. Speaking from my own recollections, I have seen such fine ships as the full-rigged Maire-Bhan, meaning Bonny Mary in Gaelic. She was a big black painted ship with white boottopping along her waterline and painted ports below her bulwarks. She had double te-gallant yards on her fore and main masts and carried a long rigged-out jibboom. She lay alongside the wharf at Auckland during December, 1890 after a passage from London of eighty-six days. In those days too the barques Hudson, Lutterworth, and Helen Denny were regular visitors, and lovely looking ships like the Turakina, the speedy clipper which had sailed right round the liner Ruapehu while they were both running the easting down in the year 1895. The Ruapehu was no sluggard on that occasion either, for under both steam and sail she was logging fourteen and a half knots. Then there were to be seen those fine ships of the New Zealand Shipping Company and the Shaw Savill Line before these companies turned over to steam. Ships like the Auckland, Westland, Canterbury, Samuel Plimsoll, Crusader, and dozens of others.

In the year 1890 the New Zealand Shipping Company owned thirteen sailing ships with a total tonnage of fourteen thousand tons, and had under charter about fifty ships in the London and New Zealand trade and ten ships in the New York trade. This was the first shipping company to take a cargo of frozen meat to England by the ship Dunedin from Port Chalmers in 1882. During the year 1890 the Shaw Savill and Albion Company dispatched fifty sailing ships to New Zealand. This was an average number pier year for that time, and there was also an increasing number of steamers of about five thousand tons each entering the trade. Here in Auckland in those years came also the American ships from New York, their hatches filled with caseoil and Yankee notions, and loaded to their marks with New Zealand flax and kauri gum for their return voyage. They were beautifully kept wooden-built vessels, nearly all barques with an occasional barquentine. They were all painted jet black with white deck-houses and te-gallant rails, and spars all scraped and varnished and not a rope yam out of place. Their poop decks were all scrapped and oiled, and woe betide the careless wharf lumper who ventured on them wearing hob-nailed boots. If he did he would as likely as not have had seven bells scared out of

B

27

SAILS BENEATH THE SOUTHERN CROSS

him by a terrific yell from a Down Easter mate. Among these ships I can well remember the Mary Hasbrouck, Alice, Charles G. Rice, and Hiram Emery, all pretty little barques, and the Trinidad barquentine.

For several decades the early vessels to visit this country did not alter to any great extent. Ships, barques, brigs, and schooners were the most popular rigs then, judging by the entries in the newspaper files of those days. Later on barquentines and brigantines came crowding into the intercolonial trade. The majority of those old ships were wooden vessels, and “ from the wheel to the pumps ” and “ the pumps to the wheel ” would have been one of the most common sayings aboard them while at sea, as they all, more or less, worked and strained considerably when there was any sea running. I have before me as I write a letter from an old seafaring friend, Captain Peter Ewing, describing some of those early traders between Australia and New Zealand. He writes; “ The barque Malay, Captain Croll, was a regular trader from Wellington with produce to Newcastle, N.S.W., and back with coal. He was a friend of my father’s, and visited our home in the early ’seventies. I believe he had a share in the vessel. The coal was discharged into drays at Wellington and sold as it was discharged at the vessel’s side.”

Captain Ewing says that he does not remember who were the owners or the agents of the barque Malay. He goes on to say that Captain Williams of Wellington owned the barques Sophia R. Luhrs and G. M. Tucker, and also the brigs Neptune and Robin Hood. “Fine little ship»s,” he says, “with bright spars, black painted outside, with painted ports. All wooden vessels, engaged in carrying potatoes and other produce to Newcastle and back to New Zealand with coal. They all carried passengers in the ’tween decks.” Captain Ewing says that Captain Williams was better known as Bully Williams from the noise he made when berthing his ships. The statement, “ They all carried passengers in the ’tween decks” struck me as being somewhat significant. It does not need a great deal of imagination to picture the plight of those poor passengers in the ’tween decks of a little coalladen brig hove to in the middle of the Tasman Sea during the height of a mid-winter gale. I hardly think that they would concur with the hard-bitten old seaman’s saying of those days:

EARLY SHIPPING

28

“ Pity the poor folk ashore to-night with the chimney pots all blowing down about their heads.”

In 1890 the kauri gum industry gave employment to about five or six thousand men, and as far back as 1863 the price per ton was £2O. The first ship to take a cargo of kauri gum from Auckland to New York in those years was the Farningham. This industry has now just about faded out and kauri gum has been replaced by other products.

Several small vessels from 120 up to 300 tons were built along the shores of Hokianga Harbour in the year 1827. They would be about the very first European-built ships to be launched in this country. Hokianga Harbour, though a fine commodious harbour once a ship is safely inside, has a dangerous bar across its mouth. It was no place from which shipping could operate in all weathers, so the early ship-builders continued their ship-building operations in ports along the north-eastern coast of the Auckland Province. In the book Taina, by G. M. Henderson, which is the autobiography of Valentine Savage, an old pakeha Maori, an account is given of the building of a small cutter at Whangaruru in the 1830s. She was called the Ngakahi, meaning a portent or sign. I think she would have been one of the first cutters, a class of vessel which could be numbered by the score in after years, trading out of the port of Auckland. They did much valuable work in opening up little coastal settlements right from East Cape to the North Cape, and for two or three decades before the advent of the sailing scows, carried such cargoes as timber and coal, firewood and general cargo from port to port. It would seem that the old Maori who gave the name of Ngakahi, a portent, to the little Whangaruru-built cutter must have had a premonition as to what was to follow in the years ahead.

The cutter fleet carried on trading out of Auckland right up till about the years 1918 or 19205. Auckland-built vessels were well known all over the Pacific a good hundred years ago, and from 1853 to 1869 four hundred and eighty-two sailing vessels were built in the Auckland Province as well as twenty-two steamers. To Dusky Sound in the South Island, however, goes the honour of having built the first European vessel in New Zealand. This was the small schooner Providence, built by the

29

SAILS BENEATH THE SOUTHERN GROSS

crew of the British ship, Britannia, Captain Raven, in 1792. The first large sailing vessel to be built near Auckland was the ship Stirlingshire of 440 tons in the year 1848. This ship was built by Captain Gillies at Port Abercrombie, Great Barrier Island, about fifty miles from Auckland.

The largest sailing vessel to be built in Auckland Harbour was the barque Novelty of 376 tons. She was launched in October, 1862 and ran for many years in the foreign going trade out of Auckland. With the arrival of the Nova Scotian settlers at Waipu in the 1850s a great impetus was added to the shipbuilding industry in the Auckland Province, and names like Matheson, Meiklejohn, Darroch, McGregor, McMillan, and many more of Nova Scotian descent appeared from time to time as builders of fine vessels. The schooner Three Cheers, built by Captain Duncan Matheson of Omaha, which won the trading vessels’ race in the Auckland Anniversary regatta in 1883, was considered as one of the fastest sailing vessels in New Zealand waters at that time. The champion cutter Rangitara, built by Captain Angus Matheson, was the fastest of her type in those days. One of Omaha’s oldest ship-builders, Mr David Darroch, who died a few years ago, left a very accurate record of the ships built by the Nova Scotian settlers in the book Ship Builders of Rodney County, and Mr N. R. McKenzie, in his book The Gael Fares Forth, has also written a very interesting and authentic account of those ships and their builders, owners, and masters. The firm of Lane and Brown of Whangaroa was well known as the builders of some of Auckland’s finest schooners, and Brown of Te Koporua and Barber of Aratapu, both of the Northern Wairoa River, built some fast sailers. It was Barber of Aratapu who built the fast island trading schooners Amy Wilson and Sybil, sister ships of about 150 tons. He also built the fast brigantine Aratapu and the little clipper topsail schooner Huia, which ran for years in the intercolonial trade.

The barque Northern Chief and the brigantine Defiance were both built at Auckland by Captain MacKay. They were well known right up to the middle of the 1900s as regular intercolonial traders out of Auckland. The barquentine Handa Isle, which was at one time employed in the Auckland-New York trade, and afterwards in the intercolonial trade, was built by

EARLY SHIPPING

30

J. Bigelow and Son of Auckland. The island trading barquentine Isabel was another Auckland-built vessel. After years of trading round these waters they were still sound, and speaking from personal experiences in several of them, as far as wooden ships went, they were good sailers, and required very little pumping even when deeply laden with coal or timber. The kauri used in their construction was as sound thirty years after as on the day it was put into their planking.

In the port of Auckland the name of Sharp and Niccol, George Niccol, Charles Bailey senr., and Charles Bailey junr., Logan and Sons, Sims and Brown, Henderson and Spraggon, Hoyle-Brown, and quite a lot of smaller firms were household words around the waterfront up till quite recent years as shipbuilders known throughout the South Pacific. In the day of the early pioneers quite a number of small vessels were built in out of the way nooks and comers by the settlers themselves. They would fell the great kauri trees, cross cut them and pit-saw the logs into the required sizes, adze the heavy crooked pohutukawa limbs into shape for the timbers, and finally launch as good a ship as would have been turned out by an Auckland ship-yard. The old schooner Saucy Kate, which ran out of Auckland for many years, was one of these coastal-built vessels. She finally finished up on a coral reef in the South Pacific trade. The fast sailing ketch Tararewa was another, as was also the pretty little cutter Ettie White.

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Chapter 3

Youth at the Helm

There was only one sport that held any real attraction for many of the Auckland boys of my day, and that was boat sailing. What a fine stretch of water we Auckland boys had to practise on to be sure. All of that expanse of the Waitemata Harbour and the Tamaki Straits, sheltered by land on all sides, and, when we had mastered the art of handling small and ofttimes crazy little boats in these sheltered waters, venturing farther afield out into the Hauraki Gulf in larger craft. Our family had not been living in Auckland long before we boys acquired a boat of sorts of our own. Living on the shores of St Mary’s Bay, Ponsonby, this was not a difficult thing to do, for in the early 1890s St Mary’s Bay was a great boating centre. My brothers and I were offered an old clinker built boat about twenty feet long by about six feet beam. I shall never forget the excitement of going down to Freemans Bay in a small punt to view our prospective purchase.

She lay hauled up on a stone wall that used to run across the outside of Freemans Bay from St Mary’s Convent point to the foreshore on the opposite side of the bay. There was a narrow gap on the town side of the wall to allow coasting craft such as scows and cutters to enter the bay at high tide. We pulled in through this gap and, making fast our punt to the stones, we scrambled up the wall and beheld our first craft. She certainly was not much to look at, but to our inexperienced and youthful eyes she was all that we desired. She had been a ship’s boat of some sort, with a straight stem and tuck stem. The stem head had been knocked off and this seemed to we boys a job that would have us puzzled.

“ That’s nothing,” said Sam the owner of her. “ You can easily get a piece of three by two kauri and splice it on to the top of the stem by cutting a scarf in the stem lower down. As far as the rest of her goes she’s as sound as a bell and hardly leaks a drop.”

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She had good solid thwarts in her and roomy stem sheets, with a little decked in locker across the after end. This intrigued me, as I was an ardent reader of such books as Treasure Island, Mutiny of H.M.S. Bounty, and the like, conjuring up visions of sailing away on the high seas, with the aforesaid locker filled with the last of the valuable stores under special guard of our skipper, who, armed with the tiller, watched that those same stores were not broached by any unauthorized person. Her name was Eleanor, cut in on the door of the locker. Between us we scraped up enough money to pay Sam the seven pounds he was asking for her. After cleaning her out and scraping and sand-papering some of the superfluous paint off her, we mixed up some white lead and linseed oil with a little patent driers, and gave her a coat of fresh paint all over. When the painting was finished we stood off to admire our handiwork, but there was something wrong about that coat of paint. As a matter of fact our boat showed up as a nondescript sickly-looking cream coloured craft of no definite hue at all.

“ Never thought of putting a drop of blue paint in yer white lead and oil as you mixed it, did you boys?” asked an old cutter sailor in a nonchalant manner. He had strolled along to have a look at us and our boat just as we had finished painting her.

“ No,” we replied. “ What effect would that have had if we had done so ? ”

“ Oh, it would just have given yer boat a real white coat o’ paint instead of yeller,” he replied with a broad grin. “ Whenever yer mix white lead and oil for white paint always add a drop of blue, or if yer haven’t any blue a little drop of black will whiten up yer paint.”

That was the trouble —we didn’t know, and so we had to start all over again and give that old boat another coat of proper white paint as soon as the first coat had dried. However, we learned by experience and one high spring tide we launched her and towed her up to St Mary’s Bay. Here we rigged her and fitted her out with sails under the supervision of some of the old hands on the beach. Then early one fine spring morning we launched her and she was ready for sea. We had discarded the name of Eleanor and in its place we christened our first

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boat Ngapuhi after the name of the Northern Maori tribe among whom we had made so many friends up at Takahue Valley. One of our first trips was down to Motutapu Island to get some shingle for ballast, which we stowed in a long box lying fore and aft under the thwarts. We had rigged the Ngapuhi as a yawl, under which rig she did pretty well, but soon after launching her we had to haul her out again and bolt a long wooden false keel on to her as she was too slow in stays and also made too much lee-way. However, during the period that we had her we learned quite a lot about boat sailing and got to know most of the islands and bays around Auckland’s approaches. As we progressed in our boat sailing abilities, we began to look around for a decked boat, one that we could go off in on a proper cruise, and stay away over night.

Luckily we came across a big beamy open boat, which we decided would make a good half-decker, with a bit of work put into her. We sold the Ngapuhi and bought the hull of the other boat, and working all through the following months we were ready to go cruising in a good sea-worthy eighteen foot, half decked, carvel built boat the next summer. Her name when we bought her was Harrier but we decided to give her a Maori name also, and changed it to Kiwi. This boat could sail a lot better than the Ngapuhi, owing to the fact that she was cutter or sloop rigged and carried a boom and gaff mainsail jib and staysail. She was also fitted with a centre board and was a fairly good little boat close-hauled.

On one occasion we were anchored at Home Bay, Motutapu Island for the week-end with a crowd of other yachts from big keelers down to little eighteen footers like ourselves. It was a week-end when the Oddfellows Picnic was being held. This was an annual affair, and steamers brought excursionists from all the ports around the Hauraki Gulf to Home Bay, Motutapu Island in those days. The big flat paddock next to the homestead in the bay Was crowded with young and old to watch the sports and see the sideshows. All of Auckland’s yachting fleet would be anchored off the beach and it was quite a job to work a boat out if the wind came in from the south-east. This it did on the occasion of which I write, and we, in our little Kiwi, were anchored inside of most of the big keelers.

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When the wind freshened up at midnight on the night of the picnic, I awoke in the little cabin to the sounds of shouting from the crews of nearby yachts and the slatting of sails as dozens of boats were getting under way. There were five of us aboard, and as I was the eldest at that time (I was 17), I was in charge of the boat.

“Tumble out, boys, and put two reefs in the mainsail,” I yelled as soon as I got out into the cockpit. The Kiwi was pitching and tossing in an alarming manner and the sea, with the wind freshening from the south-east right into the bay, was rising every minute. All around us yachts were under way reefed down and plunging close-hauled into it as they beat to sea. Quickly we reefed the mainsail and cleared the staysail ready for setting.

“ Set the mainsail, right ho. Shorten up on the anchor warp, right! Up staysail, hold it out to starboard, up anchor, let draw the staysail and flatten in on the sheet, flatten in on the main sheet a litde.” The orders and the execution of them subsided into a momentary calm as we picked up way on the starboard tack, and heeling down to the cock pit coamings the little Kiwi commenced her hard beat to windward.

“Look out! There’s a big two and a half rater heading straight for us on the port tack ! ” yelled one of my brothers.

“ Yes, and he’s on the giving way tack too! ” I muttered peering under the main boom to leeward. There he was sure enough charging ahead in the dark, taking no notice of us whatever. It meant that if we continued on our present course, though it was not our place to give way, we should certainly be run down and come off the worse.

“ Ease the main-sheet a little,” I said to one of my brothers. “ We’ll have to pass under his stem,” and putting the helm up we ran off a trifle and passed him so close that we could have touched his counter.

“You’re a lousy swine,” shouted one of the boys as we passed. A muffled retort came down to us, the purport of which was lost in the howling of the wind and the crashing of white-topped combers.

“ Stand by to come round.”

“ Right ho! ”

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“ Lee ho! ” I sang out, and putting the tiller hard down to leeward and flattening in on the main sheet she came round like a top. Off we went again on the port tack with a dozen or more boats thrashing about in close proximity to us. Now and again hulls and sails would show up, ghost-like and fleeting and at other times cabin lights were dimly visible through the murk of driving rain and sea spume. One or two more narrow escapes from colliding with other boats, and one or two more tacks to windward and we were clear of the southern point of Home Bay, and, easing the mainsail off a little, we ran up through the Motuihi Passage and round into Drunken Bay.

Running well up into the head of this bay, which lies between the Islands of Rangitoto and Motutapu, we let go anchor among a lot more of the smaller craft which had cleared out of Home Bay with us. The larger boats had beat across to Matiatia Harbour on Waiheke Island, but we smaller fry had made for the nearest shelter.

Previous to my experiences in our own little boats I had made coastal voyages in the fast sailing scow Vixen, with Captain James Biddick, Junr., and thanks to his tuition, by the time I was 16 or 17 I had a pretty good idea how to handle a small boat under sail.

“ Never make your sheets fast in a small boat,” he would say, leaning over the top of the cabin and smoking his pipe while I, as a schoolboy on holiday, would stand proudly at the Vixen's wheel on our way north to the Bay of Islands, or south to Motiti Island in the Bay of Plenty for a load of cattle or sheep.

“Don’t forget that, never make your sheets fast in a small boat, always hold them in your hand ready for letting go if a sudden squall hits you.”

"Well, mind what you're doing now, trying to write the ship's name in her wake? Don't give any vessel too much helm. The less you give her the better she'll steer."

As I replied that I would do my best to remember the things he was telling me he would go on.

" Never jam a boat too much on the wind, keep your sheets eased a little, sail her full, and let her go through the water, especially if there's any sea running. Working up into an anchorage under the land always watch for flukes from either

YOUTH AT THE HELM

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side wlfich may lay you up higher on the other tack or the tack you are on.’ And so he would talk of this or that or the other thing to do, and I would drink it all in and imagine myself in all sorts of queer places out of which I had to extricate my boat.

Aboard the Vixen also on those boyhood trips of mine was Frank the Frenchman, a sailorman to his finger tips, who had been in the French Navy under sail and who had also sailed in some of the crack French clippers under the famous A. D. Bordes' house-flag. He had found his way down to New Zealand in the early 1880s from Tahiti. A French ship that he had been in had caught fire as she was passing the Low Archipelago and her whole crew had to take to the boats and make for Papeete. From here Frank had shipped in the Auckland-owned schooner Orpheus. He made several voyages in this vessel, whose master was a Greek, and Frank said that he only knew him by the name of ' Kow Kow West.' On the last voyage Frank made with Captain ' Kow Kow,' the Orpheus sailed from Napier for Raratonga and after being two days out ' Kow Kow' decided to turn round and return to Napier.

"I ask heem the reason," said Frank to me whilst relating his experiences, "but he tell'a me, speak'a to me Frank, no speak, I catch heem da basta who steal'a my wife. Slack'a da sheets Frank we go Napeer." A couple of days later the Orpheus arrived back unexpectedly in Napier, and to Frank's astonishment his skipper was arrested for murder the next day. Sure enough he had found another man living with his wife and had straightway stabbed him. After being sentenced to death the sentence was afterwards commuted to ten years' hard labour, owing, so Frank reckoned, to extenuating circumstances. ' Kow Kow West' served his time and on his release from gaol, old Frank told me that Captain George McKenzie, one of Auckland's grandest old shipmasters, who had had the crack schooner Huia since her launching, had bought a thirty foot fishing boat and given it to ' Kow Kow West' just to help him along. Even though he was a Greek and had been convicted for murder, to old Captain George McKenzie, ' Kow Kow West' was a brother shipmaster in distress and so he helped him out. Here's to Captain George McKenzie's memory and many more

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like him in those days of small ships and broad-minded men.

To conclude about Frank, the leading hand of the Vixen in the r 890s, I kept in touch with this fine old sailorman right up to the last and on his ninetieth birthday a year or two ago I took him a bottle of French wine and drank his health. He lifted his glass in return and drank mine with all the courtliness that the French seem to acquire so naturally.

“You know,” he said to me on this occasion, “I seem now to have lived three lives, the first thirty years roving all the seas of the world, the second thirty years sailing on the New Zealand coast, and the last thirty years pottering about Auckland. I love Auckland,” he said, “ and though I was bom in the south of France, yet I love Auckland best and here I will die.”

A couple of years later he had passed on and I had lost a friend of fifty-five years standing. He gave me an old chart of 1882 of the South Pacific and marked on it are the criss-cross wanderings of the schooner Orpheus under Captain ‘ Kow Kow West.’ I still have it and ponder over it sometimes, and marvel at the march of progress as I note well-known islands of now-a-days marked on it as ‘Position Doubtful.’ Position doubtful yes, but those old mariners kept clear of them and made regular passages among them.

During those boyhood holiday trips I made in the Vixen my determination eventually to follow the sea for a living became my one thought. The Vixen, being ketch rigged with two long lower masts and two lofty topmasts was a nice looking little vessel of about fifty-five tons burden, carrying all her cargo (mostly cattle or sheep) on deck. She was built to sail and sail she could. In the early part of her career there were not many sailing vessels of her size that could keep up with her. Her hull was shallow and beamy with round bows and bilges. She was square across the stern, though besides a clean entrance forward she also had a very long clear run aft. Under such men as the master Jim Biddick and Frank, his leading hand, a boy would have been dull indeed had he not learned practical seamanship, and what I learned in those days stood to me in after years aboard square rigged ships.

Wc boys did a good deal of cruising with our little eighteen footer Kiwi and had many and varied experiences with her.

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We missed her off the moorings in St Mary’s Bay one weekend, however, and though we advertised in the daily newspapers, a whole week elapsed before we heard of her again. She had been picked up in the Hauraki Gulf by a tug-boat and had been towed back and moored at the old wooden Queen Street wharf. We went down to the tug-boat office on the wharf and interviewed the manager or his deputy about getting our boat back. To our dismay it was going to cost us more to get her back after the salvage claim was paid than she was worth. Back we went home to St Mary’s Bay to discuss the problem and then one evening at dusk one of my brothers and myself rowed down to the Queen Street wharf in our little punt and got aboard the Kiwi.

It was high water that evening at nine o’clock, so with two hours of flood tide to favour us we got to work in the dark to get the boat away. We found that the rudder had been taken ashore and that the sails and running gear and the anchor and warp were all aboard. The Kind had been moored with a long length of manila forrard fastened to a railing just outside the watchman’s office on the wharf. Over the stem led another length of brand new two inch manila. This line was evidently made fast to something pretty heavy for try as we would my brother and I could not lift it.

“Never mind, let’s have a quick look at the sails and gear,” I said, and within a few minutes we had the mainsail clear for setting and the jib and staysail also handy. We kept looking up to the wharf to see if there was any move on the part of the watchman, but all was well, a dim light was showing in his office window and we surmised that he would be inside reading his evening paper. The wind blew pretty fresh right down the harbour from the westward, and we were moored on the east side of the wharf between two piers which jutted out at right angles from the main wharf. These were the days before electricity and the only lights about at all were dimly burning gas lights and lights aboard the various ships moored alongside. -The old wooden Queen Street wharf was built well up above the spring tide mark, and both wind and sea came down pretty strongly through the hardwood piles upon which it stood. This was a very fortunate thing for us, as our object was to let the

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boat drop down dear of the wharf before we set any sails.

The incoming tide presented a bit of a problem, but we reckoned that the wind would be stronger than the tide once we let go the lines. Seeing that the main and staysail halliards were all clear for running, we pulled the little punt up alongside, putting a sack down between her and the yacht to stop her from making a noise and taking a paddle each, we were ready to cast dear. Using a sharp pocket knife we cut both mooring lines and began to move away from the wharf with the judicious use of the dinghy’s paddles. Still there was no movement on the part of the watchman and we breathed more freely as we drifted out clear of the piers.

Suddenly a gruff voice from the poop of a black-painted barque lying at one of the piers remarked, “ Looks like a boat adrift just over here.”

“Where?” asked another, and we heard footsteps on her decks and fancied we could see someone peering over her rail.

“ It’s all right, Doctor, there’s someone aboard her.”

“ Oh, is there ? ” was the reply and their voices were soon lost to us as we increased our distance. We let the little Kiwi drop out into the clear water between Queen Street wharf and the old wooden Railway wharf which used to stand where King’s wharf now stands. Having had a good look around and finding that no notice was being taken of our surreptitious departure, we slowly set the mainsail and staysail and backing her head off with the staysail until the mainsail could draw we began to move ahead out into mid-harbour.

Once clear of the wharf we picked up the good steady west wind and with the tide under our lee and with the centre board right down, we worked across the harbour on the port tack by manipulating the main and the staysail sheets alternately. We were making for Cox’s Creek, farther up the harbour than St Mary’s Bay, and it took us right up to the time of high water at nine o’clock to make it without the rudder. Many a time on coming about we had to help her round with the dinghy paddles, and then sometimes we would get her ‘ in irons ’ when we did get her around through the mainsail filling too soon and pushing her up into the wind before we could get way on again. However we got her up to the bridge at the mouth of the creek

YOUTH AT THE HELM

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on the top of the tide, and here we took the mast out of her, and as the tide dropped we got the little punt ahead and towed her under the bridge and a good way up the creek where we stowed her away in a thick grove of mangroves.

“ That’s that,” I said to my brother as we got into the little punt and rowed back to St Mary’s Bay.

“ We’ll change her topsides to dark green instead of white on Saturday afternoon.” From the point of view of a confirmed casuist we should have been condemned for the action we had taken in recovering possession of our boat, but that did not worry we boys in the least. The boat was ours by right of purchase and work, and we intended to keep her, and keep her we did. We found out afterwards that the boat had been stolen from her moorings by some wandering beach hooligans who had turned her adrift when they had finished with her, hence her being picked up in the Hauraki Gulf. Later on we sold the Kiwi for twenty pounds and she went up to the Bay of Islands.

Our next venture as boat owners was the twenty-four foot mullet boat Wairiki, a very fast sailing little craft, as was her sister ship the Swift. We bought the Wairiki for twenty pounds, the money we had got for the Kiwi. She needed some repairs and a couple of new headsails, and after getting her into first class order we made cruises farther afield around the Hauraki Gulf than we did in the little Kiwi. Like the Kiwi, she was also stolen from her moorings in St Mary’s Bay, but a few days later we found her in Freemans Bay covered in fish scales and littered up inside with oyster shells. Some oyster boys had evidently made use of our natty little craft but had cleared out and left her deserted on arrival back at Auckland, when they found that the police had the matter in hand. These oyster boys were a class peculiar to themselves in those days. The restrictions on oyster gathering and picking were not so stringent in Auckland’s early days, and the oyster boys owned quite a fleet of sailing boats, in which they used to gather oysters and bring them into town where they found a ready sale. It was a free and easy kind of life with no set routine and no regular hours, and sometimes with luck and hard work combined the oyster boys would be quite affluent, and at other times they would be pretty closehauled as far as funds went. Drink was their downfall, and the

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waterfront pubs of Auckland saw many a brawl between different crews of oyster boats. Some of the boats carried their womenfolk with them and they were just as hard cases as the men. I have passed them in the sailing scows, beating to windward off exposed corners like Cape Colville or Cape Brett, heeling over to it under close reefed sails with their lee decks under water, and the flying spray going over them as high as their mastheads. Quite often a woman would be at the tiller in glistening oilskins and hair streaming out wildly from beneath a sou’wester. A nonchalant wave of the hand and a high pitched hail would greet us as we surged past.

The Wairiki was of a class which developed in later years to a very popular class of pleasure craft in Auckland waters. They were called mullet boats because the first of their kind were built for fishing boats working in the shoal waters abounding near Auckland. Being shallow draft boats with centre boards instead of fake keels, they were able to work over the shallow mud flats with flat bottomed punts and nets, and they used to get quite large hauls of mullet in these waters. As the city grew and the mullet went farther afield, the mullet boats were turned into pleasure boats. The first mullet boats were not so beamy and had smaller tucks or transoms across the stern than the more modern craft of this type. The Wairiki was one of this class and we boys were very proud of her. She could sail like a witch, and carrying a good lot of pig iron ballast and being fitted with a good big centre board, she was a powerful boat in any wind.

Our last venture with small pleasure yachts was the thirty foot, straight-stem, counter-stern, centre-board yacht Moa. We bought this boat on the hard on the Manukau Harbour after selling Wairiki for forty pounds, and she was a little beauty both in looks and in sailing capabilities. We paid sixty pounds for the Moa as she lay on the hard, with all her gear, sails, masts, spars, anchors, warps, and two and a half tons of pig iron ballast, and we reckoned we had a bargain. We had her brought across to Auckland by road on top of a big log-carrying waggon drawn by four horses, and she looked quite a big lump of a boat perched up there as we came through the city streets. There were no electric cranes on the wharves in Auckland in those days, and to get her into the water we took her down the old Queen Street

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wharf and slung her with a good lashing of three inch manila rope on to the old hand operated crane at the end of Queen Street wharf. We hove away on the old hand crane and took the weight of the Moa off the waggon. With much creaking of gear and protesting crunching of cogs on the old crane we slewed her round till she hung poised above the water which, though it was high tide, looked to me to be a long way down should anything carry away and the boat were to drop into the harbour. However everything held and we commenced to lower her down by winding back the handle of the crane.

“ That’ll do now, boys, unship your handles; the brakes will hold her now from going down too fast,” said the Harbour Board man. We did as he suggested and the Moa began to gather way on her downward trip. Faster and faster she went with all of us straining at the brakes to ease her descent. Sparks were flying off the brakes as she finally hit the water with a splash, and so the Moa, our latest craft, came to rest on the waters of the Waitemata Harbour.

We took her up to St Mary’s Bay at high tide and beached her there, and at low water we had quite an audience of Ponsonby yachtsmen standing round her and admiring her seaworthylooking hull. When we had finished overhauling the Moa and took her out to her moorings she compared very favourably with some of the Auckland pleasure boats of her size.

Moored at St Mary’s Bay in those days were the keeler Yum Yum, which belonged to Mr Carter, manager of the Union Steam Ship Company, the steel yacht Thetis owned by Mr Masefield, the small keelers Mahoe, Glorianna, Alice, a small keel yacht with a ram-shaped stem called the Masher, and many more whose names Ido not remember. I did not have the good fortune to make many cruises in the Moa as about the time we sold the little Kiwi I had gone off to sea in sailing scows. I could not stand the dull monotony of working at a trade ashore any longer and having served about three years, I signed on my favourite first ship, the Vixen, as ordinary seaman under Captain Jim Biddick. However, now and again in between ships I would take a busman’s holiday, and go off for a cruise in the Wairiki and then the Moa.

On one occasion we took the Moa from Auckland to Coro-

c

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mandel in under four hours. A hard south-west breeze was blowing, and the good little Moa ran like a deer all the way with two hands standing by the main throat and peak halliards and lowering the sail half-way down in the hardest of the squalls. Like youth all the world over, the all-compelling desire of a change overtook first one and then another of us. My eldest brother had gone off to North Queensland prospecting for gold, and the last we had heard of him he was sailing in a lugger from Cooktown bound for the Gulf of Carpentaria with a party of prospectors. Another had gone down to Taranaki and another to the Thames. My brother next to me had shipped away in the Yankee barque Charles G. Rice to New York, and the youngest had gone to learn ship-building in the yard of Mr Charles Bailey senr. When finally the Moa was sold, I was lying in Valparaiso Bay serving my time as an able seaman in the full rigged ship Carnarvon Bay of Liverpool, discharging coal from Newcastle, N.S.W.

Chapter 4

Sailing Coasters of Auckland

So me of the finest coasters sailing out of Auckland in the 1890s and the 1900s were the East Coast schooners. These little vessels would load general cargo at Auckland and work the coastal bays from Cape Runaway, the eastern point of the Bay of Plenty, right down the East Coast as far as Castlepoint. Most of their places of call would be open roadsteads, which meant that most of their cargoes would have to be landed, and loaded for the return voyage by surfboats. Unless a man was a good hand in a surfboat it was not much use shipping in an East Coast schooner. Their cargoes on the outward voyage were often heavy and unwieldy building material, such as crates of corrugated iron, heavy sawn timber, and cement in sacks. To transport boatloads of these cargoes ashore from a small schooner lying at anchor in an open roadstead with a fair-sized ground swell running, and a vessel rolling and pitching, required firstclass boatmanship, and the East Coast schooner men were out on their own at this work.

Their return cargoes were nearly always bales of wool from the big sheep stations, and sacks of maize. Bullock waggons or sledges would bring their heavy loads right down on to the beach, often into the breaking surf. The surfboats would back in alongside the waggons from a long line fastened to a kedge, let go outside the line of surf, load up and haul out clear and then make their way under oars out to the ship. Later on oil engines were installed in the boats, which made the work less strenuous, and auxiliary power was also put into the schooners. Captain Skinner’s schooners were the best known in this trade before steamers came, and the Aotea, Awanui, and Kaeo, the latter a three-masted bald-headed fore and aft schooner, were regular traders up till just before the first great war. The Aotea was lost off East Cape in a howling easterly gale. She was one of the prettiest little fore and aft schooners sailing out of Auck-

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land at that time, as was also the schooner Awanui, which was totally lost on Niue Island in the South Pacific a few years later on.

The three-masted schooner Kaeo was also lost at Niue Island, the Master, Captain Duncan McDonald of the Bluff making a boat voyage from the wreck to Samoa for assistance. The little fore and aft schooner Waiapu was another East Coast trader. I think she is still afloat at the time of writing, in use as a lighter at Auckland. This little vessel had a perilous experience off East Cape on one occasion. Under Captain John Brown she made Auckland under jury rig after being partially dismasted. Here she was re-rigged and ran for years afterwards in the East Coast trade.

The ketch Envy, under Captain W. Champion, also had a narrow escape in one of those black north-easters which so often strike down on this coast during the winter months. She was given up for lost and prayers were offered up for her in some of the Auckland churches. Wreckage from her came ashore at the Great Barrier Island, but she came safely through, and finally arrived at Auckland in a terribly battered condition. Captain Champion was later on lost in the schooner Jubilee on a voyage to Fiji. There was talk that she took fire with a part cargo of case-oil on deck, which in all probability was what happened. Schooners were often loaded with case-oil for a deck cargo in those days, both in the Island and coastal trades.

Auckland had quite a large fleet of schooners, ketches, and cutters in the northern coal trade during the years of which I write. When the coal became worked out at the Bay of Islands, Whangarei and Ngunguru mines opened up, and a regular trade was carried on between these ports and Auckland. The topsail schooners Clio and £*or, the fore and aft schooners Saxon and Norval, the ketches Hikurangi and Will Watch, and the cutters Champion and Spitfire, ran for years in the Whangarei, Auckland, and Mahurangi trades. Later on sailing scows were engaged in this trade, especially between Ngunguru and Auckland, as the bar at Ngunguru was too shallow to allow deep draft vessels to work this port. Besides the timber scows about which I have previously written in my book ’Neath Swaying Spars, there was another class of vessel, mostly scows, which did nothing

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else but run shingle and sand from beaches around the Hauraki Gulf into Auckland.

The men who manned these vessels were in a class of their own. They worked their vessels ‘by the trip,’ that is they were not on articles, and were paid by the trip instead of by the month. Their job was to sail their vessel down the gulf to a good shingle beach, haul her in on the beach on the rising tide, and load the shingle by means of huge wheelbarrows. From an opening in the bulwarks on the inshore side they would run out a gangway of heavy planks in a single line and built up on trestles. The barrows, any one of which would make two of an ordinary wheelbarrow, would be wheeled ashore along this narrow gangway. In a vessel carrying about sixty or seventy tons, there would be about three barrows and, with a crew of four, the three best barrow men would do the wheeling, the fourth man going from barrow to barrow as they came back empty and doing the lion’s share of filling each one with heavy shingle. The front of the barrows were built out well over the wheel so that too much weight was not put upon the handles.

As each barrow was loaded the wheeler would start off at a quick trot and at a running pace would rush his heavy load up the runway and on to the deck of the scow. They would work from forrard or aft and gradually fill up the whole deck with shingle to the height of the bulwarks. Commencing at the time their vessel took the ground, an hour or so before high water, they would have her full loaded and hauled off afloat before tide fell enough to leave her grounded. Very seldom were they caught aground while loading, or take two tides to take in a full cargo, but it was hard going while it lasted, and only a man in the best of health and strength could stand up to it. Wheeling those great barrows piled high with a heavy load of shingle up those gangplanks of twelve by three timber required more than main strength and ‘ stupidity.’ It was an accomplished art, and the men who excelled in it were always in great demand by skippers of the shingle scows.

At times a shingle scow would be caught on a beach by the wind changing suddenly and a heavy sea coming in. Then only expert seamanship saved the ship and her crew, for even if they managed to haul her clear of the break on the beach, they often

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had to beat tack and tack out of some deep bay with very little searoom, and to put an ungainly square bilge scow about against the rising sea and a freshening gale every ten minutes or so for an hour or more took both skill and patience combined. It was all-tide work with the shingle scows, no matter what time they arrived off a shingle beach to load, be it midday or midnight. If the weather was at all favourable, on to the beach they would go, and within a few minutes loading operations would commence. A cold wind or rain did not stop them, and on the darkest of nights their flares would be seen lighting up the gangplanks, and hurrying figures toiling up and down from ship to shore with their ungainly looking wheelbarrows.

From a deep-water square-rigged sailing ship’s sailor’s point of view the shingle scow men would not be classed as real sailormen, that is men who besides being able to hand reef and steer, could put any kind of splice into any kind of rope, be it manila or flexible or charcoal wire. Neither would they be good hands at sail-making or sail-repairing, or any other kind of sailoring, but great credit was due to them for the forthright manner in which they loaded their peculiar kind of craft, and for the seamanlike manner in which they handled them. Known all along the waterfront as shingle pushers, they will always be remembered by anyone that knew them as one of the hardest working class of seafarers on this coast.

The moving of livestock, mostly cattle and sheep, from islands within one hundred and fifty miles radius of Auckland and coastal districts which were not connected by roads with the big centres, was a coastal trade that called for fast sailing deckcarrying scows in the days before auxiliary power came into being. As far back as the year 1882 the fast littie sailing scow Vixen was built for this trade, and during her long life she must have carried thousands of sheep and cattle on coastal voyages. In 1897 Captain Biddick had the sailing scow Vindex built, as the cattle trade was increasing all along the north-eastern coastline of the Auckland Province, and five years later, in 1902, the Vesper was built. She was the last of Biddick’s round bilge sailing scows to be built. Later on the firm owned the scows Excelsior, Wanderer, and Kohi, all larger vessels than the three round bilge vessels, and auxiliary oil engines were put into these

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vessels, as having square bilges they did not possess the sailing qualities of their three fast-sailing forerunners. During the heyday of their careers it was often hard to determine which was the fastest among Biddick’s first three vessels, and often when they were beating up to Auckland against a fresh sou’wester, first one and then another would take the lead.

I remember on one occasion standing on the front verandah of old Captain Biddick’s house at Kohimarama, and watching the Vesper, Vindex, and Vixen beating up Rangitoto Channel. The old captain had a telescope up to his eye and was keenly interested in the contest between his three smart little craft. The Vesper at that time was in charge of Captain James Biddick junr., while his brother Will had charge of the Vindex, and A. Blackwell had the Vixen.

“The Vesper is leading,” said the old captain, “but the other two are closing up on him now. It will be touch and go as to who will pass inside Bean Rock first.” The three ketch-rigged litde vessels, all painted alike, with stone-coloured bulwarks and grey hulls, were putting up a great ‘ go ’ as they raced to and fro, close-hauled on their dead beat to windward. They were inward bound with cattle from Kerikeri, Bay of Islands, and about an hour later the three of them all hauled in on to the beach together and discharged their cargoes by opening up a gangway in the bulwarks nearest the beach and allowing the cattle to jump overboard into the shallow water and go splashing up on to the beach where stockmen took charge of them.

When I first went to sea in Biddick’s sailing scows there were only a few sailing coasters out of Auckland that could keep pace with any of them, either on or off the wind, and these vessels were Captain Subritzky’s fine schooner Greyhound which was in the northern coastal trade, and the ketches Will Watch and Tararewa. Having sailed on holiday trips in the Vixen and being able to steer and make gaff topsails and headsails fast, I signed on as ordinary seaman in her and spent about six months in this fast little vessel. The Vindex at that time was a new ship, but time and again we raced her neck and neck from Bay of Islands or Whangarei to Auckland with cattle or sheep cargoes. Then again we would be sent to the Bay of Plenty, and after loading about fifty or sixty head of cattle at places like Motiti

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Island or Tauranga Harbour or Maketu, we would often fly before the might of a rising easterly blow and pass up through the passage inside the Mercury Islands bound for Auckland on a record breaking trip. Even in bad weather and with heavy seas running, our job was to sail the ship for all she was worth and keep the livestock on their feet, and this was no easy thing to do as we were only three-handed vessels, which meant only one man on deck during the four-hour watches. We did not carry enough fresh water to supply the cattle or sheep with any during a passage, and should we meet with head winds and the trip was being prolonged too much, it meant putting in to some anchorage on the way and landing the stock for water. This did not often happen, as the skippers of the catde scows were experts at foretelling the weather.

Not all our freights were livestock, though, and now and again we would be sent to load such freights as railway sleepers, fencing posts or sawn timber from some country sawmill along the coast. Often these cargoes would be lying on some exposed ocean beach, where we would have to beach the scow on an ebbing tide and get the whole freight loaded by the time she floated again on the next tide. There was a real danger attached to these loading operations on exposed ocean beaches, when the wind would suddenly shift and come in, bringing with it a big sea into the bargain. We always had a good heavy kedge anchor let go well out beyond the break, but often before we were properly afloat the scow would begin to pound heavily on the incoming tide as the big rollers raced inshore and set us half afloat, and then recede to return with additional weight the next time. Our small crew would stand by the windlass forrard gathering up the slack of the four-inch coir-line each time it slacked. Half drowned and smothered by the high incoming rollers as they flew over our bows, we would heave for our lives, and then all of a sudden off she would come on an extra big roller breaking all around her, and we would rattle the kedge line in like men possessed. Urged on by loud and vehement exhortations as “ Heave and she must,” “ Heave and walk her out,” “ Heave and bust her,” we would heave until we were nearly dropping. Then with a mighty roar from the skipper, “ Vast heaving, get the rags on to her! ” we would jump from the windlass to the

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halliards and up would go the mizzen and foresail, threshing and jumping and creating such a clamour that it was difficult to make oneself heard. Guying the mizzen boom over to the tack he wished to head out on, the skipper would roar out from aft, “ Give her all the centre board and then stand by to heave in the kedge when I sing out.”

“ Break her out boys ! ” would come the order a moment or so later and we would quickly heave away on the kedge, and once it was off the ground, up jib and staysail. Then the little Vixen would quickly begin to prove herself the fast sailing craft that she was. Two or three smart tacks out into the murky blackness to windward and then round we would come again on the starboard tack.

“ Keep a good look out for Elizabeth Reef. We will pass along inside it and outside the Wideberth Islands and run into Whangaruru harbour to-night,” shouted the skipper, as Frank and I stowed the kedge away under the heel of the bowsprit and coiled the long length of coir warp down on top of the deck load of railway sleepers. We had loaded in Sandy Bay, an exposed beach not far south of Whangaruru, and the sleepers were for the railway at Opua in the Bay of Islands, whither we were now bound. An hour or so after getting under way off the beach we ran in between Henry Island and Home Point and let go anchor under the land, above the ledge of black rocks inside Home Point.

“Give her thirty fathoms fore-part of the windlass, Frank,” the skipper called out as he and I lowered the threshing foresail and mizzen down. “ We’re in for a snorter from the nor-east to-night by the look of it,” he added as the three of us made our way below after seeing everything on deck was well secured. This and many other incidents aboard the sailing scows come crowding through my memories as I sit and write of them.

One day we loaded a mixed cargo of big steers, half a dozen race-horses, and a score or more of squealing pigs at Motiti Island in the Bay of Plenty. The steers went aboard from the stockyard on the beach, up a railed-in gangway, and on to the vessel’s deck in quite an orderly manner. The pigs protested in vociferous and raucous chorus but trotted up the gangway in great style. Not so the horses however. They treated the whole pro-

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cedure as a downright indignity and reacted accordingly. During the struggle, as they reared and bucked and kicked, a rail on the side of the gangway carried away, and before it could be secured, out went a couple of stallions into the water. Instead of heading up the beach as we had reckoned on, they swam swifdy out to sea. Two of us jumped into the dinghy and set off after them. We succeeded in heading one fellow back to the beach where he was soon run into the stockyard by horsemen. The other headed straight out to open sea with the boat in hot pursuit. After about a mile hard pull we came up with him and got a halter round his neck, and commenced towing him back to the vessel which had hauled out to an anchor. Luckily for us this vessel was the Excelsior, one of Biddick’s auxiliary scows, and she had a derrick fitted to a gooseneck at the heel of her foremast. The skipper and engineer had the derrick rigged with a double wire fall leading on to an oil winch forrard, and it did not take long to pass a heavy canvas and rope sling around the protesting stallion, and up he came snorting and neighing to be deposited in quick style among his surprised shipmates. “ That’ll lam yer,” quoth our Cockney cook with a facetious grin on his face.

Then there were the Kaipara and Hokianga timber traders; the three-masted topsail schooner scow Eunice, more like a shallow draft round bilge schooner she was. I have seen her timber laden for Auckland and carrying about three hundred thousand feet of kauri in her hold and on deck, work out over Kaipara Bar on the ebb tide, and claw off to sea with her three centre boards down, sailing like a yacht. The three-masted fore and aft schooner-rigged deck-carrying Hawk was another I sailed in in this trade. She was not much good in a head sea or a head wind but give her a point or two off the wind and she would take some catching. The about the largest of the sailing scow fleet, was another good timber carrier. She was a real flat-bottomed square bilge scow, three-masted topsail-schooner, rigged, and pretty fast off the wind especially when empty. At different times I sailed in them all, and a man had to be a fully qualified seaman to sign on in any of them. The masters and crews of these vessels were sailing ship men all right, and their vessels were real sea-going ships, many of them sailing in the intercolonial trade between New Zealand and Australia. One

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three-masted topsail schooner scow, War Lord, had been as far afield as ’Frisco. During the Second World War many of the Auckland scows served with the Americans in the forward fighting areas among the South Pacific Islands, and that is where some of them ended their days.

Chapter 5

Island Schooners and Schooner Racing

Although the South Sea Island schooners had reached . the zenith of their fame before I was old enough to remember the best of them, yet as a boy I sailed with many of the men who had manned them. In the late 1880s and the early 1900s there were still a few of these fine yacht-like little vessels sailing out of Auckland, and among them I remember the brigantines Ryno and Linda Webber, and the schooners Agnes Donald, Norval, and Marmion. Steamers eventually drove the last of them out of the Island trade, but while the schooners were running the people of Auckland were a long way better off for Island oranges and bananas than they are today, for at that time one was able to buy a dozen oranges for one shilling, while bananas were sold at twopence a pound. The Island schooners’ berths were favourite haunts for many schoolboys in those days, and when a newly-arrived schooner was in we were always sure to go back home with a kit full of luscious oranges or a bunch of bananas bought at the ship’s side for a shilling.

Many an Auckland boy made his first trip to sea in an Island schooner. There was an irresistible lure about them that could not be denied to any boy with the faintest spark of romance in his make-up. It was not only the trade that they were in that appealed so strongly to me, but it was the schooners themselves that formed the main attraction. The dazzling whiteness of their hulls, their pretty bows decorated with gold painted scroll work, their natty riggs with scraped and varnished spars, and in some of them their Island crews dressed in lava-lavas, and Islandmade straw hats. Always in the near vicinity to the Island schooners’ berths was the ineffable aroma of the Islands, somewhat sickly at times with the smell of copra, and then again fragrant with the scent of flowers.

I remember beating up Rangitoto Channel in company with the Island schooner Made before I had commenced my seafaring life. We were only boys at the time, but the memory of

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that pretty little vessel, inward bound from the Friendly Islands with the aroma of the South Sea Islands still clinging to her as she swept past us to windward, remains with me still. The Maile was lost while on a voyage to the Friendly Islands many years ago, just one of the many lovely little schooners of Auckland that disappeared over the rim of the horizon never to return. As long as Auckland celebrates its annual anniversary with a regatta, the fame of the Island trading schooners will always be remembered, for their race was the most exciting and spectacular event ever sailed in these waters. Stately brigantines, topsail schooners and fore and aft schooners contested this event in those days of long ago when Auckland was the port of sailing ships. Names like Borealis, Three Cheers, Amy Wilson, Sybil, Transit, and many more were on every one’s lips on Regatta Day then, and great credit is due to the owners, masters and crews of those fast sailing trading vessels who kept the Regatta Day spirit alive until yacht clubs were founded.

From the days of the China Tea Clippers down to the present time there have always been amongst us scores of men and youths, both professional seamen and yachtsmen, who have ‘ loved the game beyond the prize,’ and year after year have raced their respective craft for the very love of the game. Though that most spectacular event of the Auckland Anniversary Regatta on January 29 of each year, the South Sea Island Schooner Race, was before my time, yet as a youth I lived in that age when the enthusiasm for sailing races for all classes of vessels, from the smallest sailing boat to the largest of the trading cutters and scows, ran just as high as it did on the waterfront when the Island schooners raced years before. Apart from the sailing scows, which I have already mentioned, the Auckland cutters made quite a fleet in themselves, and a splendid little fleet they were too. Just for old time’s sake I must name a few of them that ran in and out of Auckland from our port’s early days, up to the last of them, which disappeared from the scene about the time of the Great War of 1914-18. Here they are : Mana, Leo, Eleanor, Gipsy, Champion, Tokerau, Lizzie Parker, Mercury, Wanderer, Dream, Paku, Jane, Rose, Coralie, Spitfire, Stag, Start, Severn, Sovereign of the Seas, Weir, Matakana, Faun, Tamaki Packet, Morning-Light, Evening-Star, Teviot,

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Antelope, Lancashire-Lass, Ettie-White, Flora, Mary Ann, Petrel, Vixen, Otahuhu, George, Lady-Rath, Dolphin, Eupkemia, Rangatira, Half-Cast, Sarah, Lee, Lay, Esh, Willie Winkie, Harvest Home, Gannet, Seagull, Lily, Kiwi, Leah, Whangarei, Rob-Roy, Magic, Four-Sisters, Three-Sisters, Teaser, Henry, Nancy, Water-Lily, Katie, Transit, Cygnet, Watchman, Rosalie, Helena, Isabella, Katherine, and others of which I have no record.

Many of these little vessels were regular competitors at the Auckland Anniversary Regatta. The fastest sailers would have been the Maori-owned Rangatira, the Sovereign of the Seas, Henry, Harvest Home, Leo and Mana. They were all one masted vessels, mostly carrying a Added topmast, and under mainsail, main gaff topsail and three headsails and were smart looking little vessels. A man and boy, or two men each, formed their crews, and they traded to all sorts of nooks and comers round about our northern coasts.

Many tales of running contraband cargoes were told of the cutters in the old days. On one occasion, an Auckland cutter ran down into the Gulf of Thames and came to anchor at sunset off Grahamstown, putting up the usual riding light. Being a suspected vessel, the Customs authorities decided to pay her a visit in the morning. When daylight came, however, all that remained of the suspicious cutter and her cargo was a riding light hung on the top of a long pole stuck into the mud. Many of these little vessels were finally sold to the South Sea Islands, whither they sailed on their own. Others were wrecked in stormy weather round the coast, while many ended their days rotting away in back-waters and creeks. Very few are still afloat at the time I write. I think in Auckland, the port from which most of them hailed, the old ketch Clifton, ex-cutter Evening Star, and the little Rewa ex Rosalie, are the last. Yet their names figured quite a lot in the newspapers of years gone by, especially on Anniversary Day, when they turned out with the schooners to help to make that day a success. For instance, in the year 1871, the local newspapers report that the regatta, held on January 30, was a memorable occasion. The papers state that the then Government steamer Luna was the Flagship, and that she was covered with bunting from end to end. “ Most

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of the youth and beauty of Auckland were aboard her on that day,” and the steamers Royal Alfred, Lalla Rook and Enterprise carried passengers round the harbour. In the year 1872 again the papers stated that the Regatta was wonderful. In the trading vessels race, the schooners La Noba (thirty-one tons), Dauntless (seventy-two tons), Clio (seventy-five tons), Cambria (forty-five tons), Arawa (fifty-two tons), and Saucy Lass (thirtyfive tons), put up a great show. The Dauntless came home first but La Noba won on time allowance. This was the race of the day. Then there was the cutter race of that year, when the Sovereign of the Seas (twenty-nine tons, later to become so well known over the Gaffrey and Penn murder case) beat the Mercury (thirty-two tons), Elsie (thirty tons), Hero (twenty tons), and Nautilus (twenty-nine tons). The Sovereign of the Seas and the Mercury were the crack cutters in those days. Coming on to the year 1875, the schooner race prize money was raised from thirty pounds for first place to fifty, and even this sum was thought little enough to entice the large brigantines and schooners to enter. In this year the schooner Clematis, a previous winner, was beaten by the Peerless, a powerful new vessel that none of the older vessels could beat. In the Regatta of 1876, the Peerless was absent and the Jessie Henderson (ninety-two tons) won, beating the Colonist (forty-two tons), Favourite (forty-six tons), Adah (fifty-four tons), and Agnes Donald (sixty-two tons).

In the cutter race of that year the crack boat Mercury beat the Leo, Gipsy, Mana and Caroline. The race was fought out by the Leo and Mercury, the Mercury winning by only twenty seconds.

In 1877 five smart little vessels entered for the schooner race, which really was open for all rigs. They were the Acadia, Bell Brandon, May Hogan, Adah, and Nellie. The Bell Brandon won by fourteen minutes. In 1879 the prize for the schooner race was raised to one hundred pounds, and nine fine vessels started, including schooners, brigantines and ketches. The scfiooner Transit, Captain Mat Hooper, a famous regatta sailing master, beat the brigantine Myrtle. This latter vessel was a powerful sailer and was close behind the winner, but the Transit got the one hundred pound prize.

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In 1880, the first prize for the schooner race was one hundred pounds, and a sextant for the master of the winning boat as well. In this year there was a large fleet of Island trading schooners registered at Auckland, but all could not be in port on Regatta Day. However, three large new schooners, the Annie Wilson (one hundred and fifty tons), and Sybil (one hundred and fifty tons) (sister ships), Borealis, Caledonia, Reward, May Anderson, Fleetwing, Adah, Mageppa, Ryno and Albatross, some of these were brigantines and some schooners, all lined up for the start. The Mazeppa, which had made a great name for herself in ocean passages, did not come up to her admirers’ expectations on Regatta Day, as she came home last. The brigantine Borealis, Captain McKenzie, was also regarded as a likely winner, but the old hands would have it that a brigantine never won an Auckland Regatta. The Borealis came fourth. Mr N. R. McKenzie in his book The Gael Fares Forth gives a splendid account of some of these old time regattas. All New Zealand seafarers of those days had heard of the Barber-built vessel from the Kaipara, and great things were expected of the new Annie Wilson and Sybil. They had to contend, however, with Captain Mat Hooper again in the new schooner Transit. The two Barber-built vessels lead the fleet in, though the prize went to Transit, which had seven minutes from the Sybil, which crossed the line first, with Annie Wilson two minutes behind her. The year 1880, in the big cutter race, the Maori’s cutter Rangatira beat the Sovereign of the Seas by three minutes.

In 1881 another large fleet of schooners, nine in all, turned out for this race, which was won by a new schooner called the Sovereign of the Seas. She had every chance of winning as she was sailed by the famous schooner master Mat Hooper. This year there was a strong breeze from the ENE., a beat right up the harbour, and the race was fought out between the schooners Torea and Sovereign of the Seas, the latter winning by two minutes. The Auckland Anniversary Regatta was getting larger as the years went by, and in 1881 there were five trading vessels races, viz., champion schooners over fifty tons, small schooners under fifty tons, scow race, big cutter race, and small cutter race. In the cutter race this year the Maori cutter Rangatira won again, the other cutters being Fannie, Rose, Lizzie, Champion and Janet.

lovisa craig The barque Louisa Cr<ii«. formerly Peru, was originally owned by Stewai ts ol London. She was an iron barque built at Kinghorn, Fifeshire, in 1876. Her first name when she came to New Zealand was Raupo, but she was renamed Louisa Craig when she came under J. J. Craig's Hag. She was hulked in New Zealand in 1923.

ST kil d a The St Kilda was a small iron barquentine of 189 tuns, built at Paisley Scotland in 1868. During the first gold rush to the West Coast of the South Island, the Si Kilda carried passengers from Melbourne to Greymouth. She was hulked in 191 1. The author sailed in her under Captain Longwill in 1906.

laur \ The Laura was a wooden barquentine of 326 tons, buill ..1 Nordly in 1889. She was originally the Danish barque Laura She was in the intercolonial trade foi some years and was registered .11 Suva, Fiji in ij

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In 1882 the schooners Gisborne, Sybil, Torea and Transit raced. The contest was fought out between Tarea and Transit, Captains Grundy and Hooper. Mat Hooper in the Transit won again, with Torea just two minutes behind. In this race the fast Sybil, which had won two years before, came in last. This was the last time that the schooner Transit raced in an Auckland Anniversary Regatta as she was wrecked at Napier shortly afterwards.

In 1883 five schooners entered for the champion schooner race. They were the Annie Wilson, Fanny Thornton, Winifred, Kate McGregor, and the new schooner Three Cheers. The Three Cheers was built by Captain Allan Mathison of Waipu, but unfortunately he was killed while rigging her, so Captain M. McKenzie, known to all seafaring fraternity of those days as the ‘ Old Man ’ sailed her in this race. Captain McKenzie was in his seventies at that time and went to sea to the last. The Three Cheers proved too fast for all the others, and with old Captain McKenzie at the helm, she romped home first, beating the fast Annie Wilson, captained by the famous Mat Hooper, hands down. This race was the biggest surprise in the history of the Auckland Regattas.

In the big cutter race the Maoris won for the fourth year running in their fast cutter Rangatira (meaning Chief). The Maoris were great seamen in those days. It is claimed by some authorities that in the year 1884 the Auckland Anniversary Regatta reached its zenith. This year the first prize for the Champion Schooner Race was one hundred and fifty pounds in cash, a champion flag, a silver cup and a captain’s sextant, about one hundred and ninety pounds worth in all.

The fast little Island trading schooner Cygnet owned by Captain W. Ross had been sold in 1883 to some Tongan chiefs at the Friendly Islands. They lost her about eighteen months afterwards on one of the numerous coral reefs which abound in that group of Islands. Captain Ross, however, had another Cygnet built to replace his last vessel. The possible entry of this new Cygnet in the schooner race caused quite a stir among the owners and masters of the other competing schooners. They all claimed that the new boat would be too fast to allow them a chance of winning so they all, ten in number, notified the

D

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Regatta Committee that they would not enter against her. The Committee then tried to exclude her but were unsuccessful. The new Cygnet arrived in Auckland from her builder’s yard six days before the race, and her looks increased the impression that she would be a very fast vessel. There was another fast schooner though, that was also entering for the race —the Louie of ninetyseven tons, built for a cruising yacht and finished for a merchant vessel. The owner and master of the Cygnet was asked to sign a paper submitting to a handicap on the morning of the race. This he refused to do, unless the handicap was limited and stated. The Cygnet was much the smallest vessel and, by usual custom, was entitled to get time allowance from the larger vessels. The Cygnet’s owner was willing to surrender this to make the race possible. The Cygnet agreed to give the larger vessels time allowance, and the schooners Cygnet, Fanny Thornton, Sybil and Louie were entered. In the next chapter I shall give an account of their race as reported in the Auckland Star of January 29, 1884.

5'

Chapter 6

Island Schooner Race in the Auckland Regatta

JANUARY 29, 1884

From the Auckland Star

Champion Trading Race (Handicap) for vessels of fifty tons register and upwards (any rig except cutters) First prize one hundred and fifty pounds and Champion flag and miniature sextant, Second prize fifty pounds, and Third prize twenty-five pounds.

Entries, schooners : Cygnet (fifty-six tons), Fanny Thornton (eighty-two tons), Sybil (one hundred and fifty tons), Louie 'ninetv-nine tons).

The small number of entries for this event can be attributed to nothing but ill-luck. A prize of one hundred and fifty pounds is no doubt a great inducement to owners of vessels, but yet the chances of winning are not considered good enough to keep a vessel lying idle in port for several weeks before the Regatta in order to make sure of her being here in time and in proper condition. Thus, when looking over our records of regattas for several years, we find the numbers of entries vary considerably. Once or twice, as on the present occasion, there have been only a few competitors, but as a rule the competing craft have been much more numerous. A series of misfortunes appears to have attended the Champion Schooner Race of 1884. The first was the wreck of the Transit, which took place at Napier, and in her disappearance lost the champion of many a closely contested race. However she was an old vessel, having done credit to the port for a long period as a smart sailing vessel. While her loss was regretted it was considered that her absence would induce great competition in future events. This seemed likely to be the case until very recently, and it was contemplated that this year would see something like a dozen entries for the Champion Schooner Race. The Three Cheers and the Sovereign of the Seas, the victor of a previous contest,

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were both in port a month ago, but their owners, or their charterers, did not consider it worth while to keep them here waiting the event, accordingly they were sent away for lengthy voyages. The Torea and Annie Wilson, which were considered almost certainties, next caused considerable disappointment, for only last week it became known that trade engagements would prevent their arrival here in time for the Regatta. Following this, we heard of the wreck of the schooners Agnes Bell and Atlantic at Raratonga. One, or both, were counted on for the Regatta, and the wrecks proved a severe disappointment to many. Next it was rumoured that the Sybil, which was lying in port for sale would not enter, and it was an agreeable surprise when her master appeared at the Regatta Committee Meeting on entry night, and added her name to those already given. Yesterday, however, after the vessel had been almost put in trim for the event, the owners (Messrs. Nathan and Co.) objected to the course pursued by the master and the Sybil’s nomination was accordingly withdrawn. This left only three vessels, the Cygnet, Lome, and Fanny Thornton, each of which was considered to have a good prospect of winning, the result depending a great deal on ‘ how the wind blew.’ The Cygnet was backed heavily, but yet the Louie found numerous supporters, and large sums of money were laid on each craft.

The Lome, it may be remembered, was built in 1882 by Mr H. Niccol of North Shore for an Island cruiser. She was constructed on very fine lines, but owing to a change of ownership which occurred before the vessel was completed, she was slightly undermasted to fit her for regular trading. The Cygnet, it is scarcely necessary to remark, was also built for a fast sailing vessel, so much so that the masters of other vessels publicly expressed their fear of her by objecting to enter for the Regatta were she allowed to take part. The trouble into which the Regatta Committee ran themselves in trying to exclude and handicap her is also well known, and after all, when the race started she was backed at even money against the Louie, it being considered that the race really lay between these two. The Fanny Thornton nevertheless appeared with the full intentions of her owners to win if possible, and they evidently considered their prospects of receiving the prize very good, for the vessel

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had been in port for nearly a month refitting especially for the race. The handicappers met this morning and decided to let the Cygnet and Lome go at scratch, each to allow the Fanny Thornton fifteen minutes. The Cygnet was in charge of Captain W. Ross, while Captain Keane had charge of the Fanny Thornton and Captain Pillinger the Louie. The vessels took up their positions to the southward of the flagship shortly before 8 a.m., the Cygnet and Fanny Thornton with some of their sails set while the Louie’s sails were lowered down. The Louie appeared as a topsail schooner, her rig having been altered by the addition of a raffery. When the gun fired punctually to the time announced for starting, the three vessels lay at anchor head to wind. The Cygnet smartly fell off before the stiff sou-westerly breeze, and she was speedily followed by the Louie, which was delayed somewhat in getting the canvas on to her, but although thrown a few minutes late by this misfortune she was soon quickly in pursuit of the Cygnet which was making very fast progress down the harbour. The Fanny Thornton was well behind. Although soon under all sail she was very slow in getting way on and it was at once apparent that her chances of winning were very poor indeed. As the vessels sped onwards towards the North Shore each gradually was covered with a cloud of canvas, with the object of making the very best possible use of a splendid fair wind. The Cygnet and Louie bowled along in splendid style, increasing the lead upon the Fanny Thornton every moment, while the difference between themselves shortly became almost imperceptible and those who before had much faith in the Cygnet, began to lose confidence. Abreast of Calliope Point, the vessels were on pretty even terms, but bringing a good stiff breeze along with her, the Louie, which had the windward position, gained almost a length. This gave the Cygnet equal advantage so far as the wind was concerned, and all her canvas drawing beautifully, the difference was at once noticeable. Gradually she gained inch by inch upon her larger opponent, but even then so slowly that while the two symmetrical and yacht-like craft were almost side by side, it was only with difficulty that the slight advantage which the Cygnet was gaining could be noticed. The wind broke away slightly, and immediately the Louie had all her former ad van-

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tage of a length back again, this being the position approaching the North Shore Wharf. The Fanny Thornton came on a long way behind at a snail’s pace, only half her canvas drawing. As the vessels passed the North Shore Wharf a favourable puff again swelled the Cygnet’s canvas to its widest dimensions and once more she stole along swiftly covering the Louie’s quarter. Gradually the breeze freshened, and despite her leeward position, the Cygnet crept up to her opponent, each moment making her more and more even. Ere the recently destroyed North Shore Wharf was reached the two vessels were abreast of each other and the struggle for supremacy began in earnest. They were so close together at this time that a biscuit might have been thrown from one to the other. Passing the Sandspit buoy, the Cygnet had a scarcely perceptible lead, and giving the shore a wide berth she soon had her stem ahead of the Louie’s, but her advantage was of brief duration, the Louie again getting exactly on level terms with her. Rounding the North Head, the vessels were well away before the wind and every sail was drawing beautifully. Few sights could have been prettier than that presented by what was virtually a yacht race. Side by side the handsome schooners sped onwards, their symmetrical lines and natty rig showing to advantage, while the foam curled and splashed around their bows. Leading down the fairway of the channel the Louie again got an advantage of a couple of yards and the Cygnet once more recovered it. Canvas was now a great consideration, and the Louie soon showed a ring-tail, but the necessity for close hauling soon becoming apparent, it quickly disappeared. Approaching the first buoy in the channel a puff sent the Cygnet slightly in advance of the Louie, which now had the lee position. The difference became more and more perceptible, until the Cygnet had gained more than a length, when the Louie weathered her and took the wind out of her sails, assuming a more favourable position though still astern of Cygnet. The Fanny Thornton was at this time clear of North Head, with all her canvas drawing well at last, and appearing to be holding her own, and now there seemed every reason to believe that she would not even be the handicap fifteen minutes behind the others at the finish. She had, however, lost fully a quarter of a mile at this time. Profiting by the smartness of her

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master, the Louie continued to blanket the Cygnet and took the lead, as Rangitoto Reef was approached, by about two lengths. The Cygnet made several attempts to weather her opponent, but the wind was heading her off too much, while her flying gaff topsail did not set at all well, and she did not get the same show to perform the feat. Close to the beacon on the reef the Cygnet however succeeded in getting the weather position but by that time the Louie had increased her lead by several lengths. Rangitoto Reef was passed in this order, the Louie being four or five lengths ahead of the Cygnet, with the Fanny Thornton still about a quarter of a mile behind. The vessels passed the outer end of Rangitoto Island in the following order:

Louie, 9 hr. 13 min. o sec.

Cygnet, 9 hr. 13 min. 45 sec.

Fanny Thornton, 9 hr. 17 min. o sec.

From this point they went away with a spanking breeze, the Louie gaining considerably on the Cygnet in the run out to Tiri Tiri Island, while the Fanny Thornton overhauled the Cygnet by some thirty and forty seconds. All the vessels stood well over towards the Whangaparaoa Peninsula side of the passage, and then shaped a course for rounding Tiri Tiri Island. The vessels were in the order given below when passing out of sight round the NW. point of Tiri.

Louie, 10 hr. 33 min. o sec.

Cygnet, 10 hr. 37 min. o sec.

Fanny Thornton, 10 hr. 38 min. 30 sec.

The Louie was only ten minutes before she hove in sight again round the NE. end of the island standing on towards Rakino Island. The Louie sent down her square topsail and the Cygnet took in her square sail on rounding the island, and hauling close on the wind for the beat back, both schooners were laying down to it with their lee scuppers awash as the breeze freshened. The Fanny Thornton, still some way astern, hung close up under the land as she rounded the island. The Cygnet sent down her flying main gaff topsail as it did not set well on the wind, and set a smaller sail in its place. The Louie did not do so well on the wind, and the Cygnet, which kept farther to windward, materially improved her position, while the Fanny Thornton fell still farther astern. The vessels all came round on the other tack

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at eleven o’clock and stood back towards Whangaparaoa Peninsula. The Louie, however, came round soon after and stood back towards Rakino Island again, the Cygnet and Fanny Thornton standing well in under Whangaparaoa Peninsula. By working this shore these two worked well to windward of the Louie. The trading scows, which were also racing over the same course as the island schooners, also worked the western shore, led by the little Vixen, Biddick’s champion scow. Neck and neck the schooner Cygnet and the scow Vixen beat tack for tack to windward. Gradually the Cygnet headed the whole fleet and at 12.30 Captain Ross of the Cygnet was confident of finishing first although doubtful yet as to whether the Fanny Thornton might not come out right on time allowance.

At 12.45 P- m - tdl the vessels were beating well to windward with a fine whole-sail breeze. The racing cutters and scows had become all mixed up together except the fast scow Vixen, which was well ahead along with the schooner Cygnet. An intercolonial steamer, the Ringarooma, was coming up through Tiri Tiri passage with the disabled scow Result in tow. This scow, in standing too close in to the island when rounding it, had knocked her centre board out and holed her hull. She was towed back to port full of water and on her beam ends.

At 1.35 the Cygnet weathered the scow Vixen, crossing her bows, the crews of each vessel cheering heartily and waving their hats. At 1.40, failing to weather the Rangitoto Reef, the Cygnet tacked ship and lay across for the North Head, the breeze freshening to such an extent that her lee bulwarks were quite submerged. The Cygnet was proving herself on the wind, but so strong came the wind that the fore sheet had to be slackened and the jib topsail taken in. At this stage the Fanny Thornton was fully two miles astern. At 2.30 the Cygnet passed the North Head and stood right across the harbour towards Orakei Bay. Coming round again off Orakei she lay back across the harbour to North Shore Wharf, and tacking again made Mechanic’s Bay on the next board, just as the Fanny Thornton showed her nose around North Head. The greatest excitement now prevailed, the time allowance lessening considerably the Cygnet’s advantage, and making it just touch and go with the two vessels. Off Dr Campbell’s residence the Cygnet tacked and stood down to

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the Flagship. The Fanny Thornton at this time was lying across the harbour towards Orakei. At 2.48 the Cygnet passed the barque Candidate and two minutes later took a board down towards the Railway Wharf, tacking again at 2.55 and standing straight down the harbour passed the Flagship. She had to tack again, however, to pass the post, which she did at 2.58 p.m., the band striking up ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’ as the gun boomed out for the Cygnet’s completion of the race. As, however, the Fanny Thornton received fifteen minutes from the Cygnet, the prize still remained in doubt, more especially as the Fanny Thornton was making good headway up the harbour. These fears were soon dissipated, however, for the fateful fifteen minutes passed away and still the Fanny Thornton was hardly beyond Calliope Point. Fourteen minutes later she also passed the Flagship and the result was Cygnet, 2 hrs. 58 mins. 32 secs., Ist place; Fanny Thornton, 3 hrs. 27 mins. 30 secs., 2nd place; and the Louie not even in sight.

Mr Lane, one of the builders of the Cygnet, was on board all through the race and lent valuable assistance to Captain Ross, who handled his vessel with great skill and shrewdness, with the help of a first rate and willing crew. And so ended the Island Schooner Race of 1884 at the Auckland Anniversary Regatta.

Following the regatta of 1884, the number of island schooners trading out of the port of Auckland began to dwindle, and the great race between the Cygnet, Louie and Fanny Thornton proved to be the last schooner race sailed at Auckland Anniversary Regatta. In 1885 the only likely schooner to come along was the Sovereign of the Seas, with the famous racing skipper Mat Hooper in command. As she could find no worthy opponent, the schooner race this year fell through, as did also the scow race. The big cutters put up a good show this year with the new cutter Nellie beating the old champion Sovereign of the Seas, Fannie and Morea. In the small cutter race this year the Henry, Gannet, Mahurangi and Euphemia sailed a great race, in fact one of the best that the port had seen. The Mahurangi came first and was closely followed by the Henry and Gannet. In 1886 both the island schooner race and the sailing scows race fell through. The advent of steam in the

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island trade had caused a great many schooner owners to sell their vessels, and the square bilge scows were all afraid of the little round-bilge scow Vixen. This year, in the big cutter race, the old champion Sovereign of the Seas kept up her reputation by beating the crack new cutter Nellie, and crossed the line first well ahead of all the others.

At the Regatta of 1887 there was again no schooner race and no sailing scow race, and to make matters worse the big cutters failed to make a race, for the first time in the history of the Auckland Anniversary Regatta. The forty-five schooners formerly belonging to Auckland were now reduced to about fifteen, and these smart little vessels, trading to island groups as far distant as fifteen hundred to two and three thousand miles away, could not possibly muster enough in Auckland on Regatta Day to make a race. Again, the square bilge sailing scows were afraid to enter with the Vixen as a competitor, and the cutter race also fell through. The big cutter Sovereign of the Seas had been pirated away by Gaffrey and Penn after the murder of a settler named Taylor on Great Barrier Island, and she had run ashore on the coast of New South Wales and was wrecked, and in her loss one of the greatest incentives for other fast cutters to enter the regatta was gone.

Three or four years later, interest again began to revive in the trading vessels’ races at the Auckland Regatta and from 1890 up to about 19 11-i 2 some fine races were witnessed, when the sailing scows and cutters followed along in the wake of the fine island schooners, which had had their day. Never again after the year 1884 did they grace the beautiful waters of the Waitemata Harbour, with their fine lines and clouds of canvas, on Regatta Day.

Though steam had monopolized most of the well-known trading centres among the South Sea Islands, Auckland schooners continued to trade to the more outlying islands and atolls for many years; in fact it is only of recent years that the last of them ceased to trade out of Auckland. Their memory still lives with many an old ‘sailor of the sail.’ Closing my eyes, I can again visualize their straining canvas, their slanting decks drenched with the flung spray, their lofty spars and thrumming rigging and taut gear, the skilled master mariners at the wheels

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of their fleet craft, and “ the keen hard-bitten seamen, hard-case, lean” who thronged their decks. I often think that in our march towards progress we may have left the best behind.

Chapter 7

A South Sea Island Voyage in the Barquentine “Ysabel”

I'd like to wander, till my days are done.

Quit my house-door, pass through my city's gate

And take the road that round the world doth run

The long strong road so like a stream in spate.

It may be that best things nearest lie,

That goodliest fruit in sheltered gardens grow,

And wanderers find naught new beneath the sky

Still, wandering is the surest way to know

M. Hort

“ T7' very one who knows her speaks of her as fast, and all J—i admit she is old; yet withal, she still retains much of her original charm of appearance.”

These lines were written by a New Zealand Herald reporter about that well-known sailing vessel, the Auckland barquentine Isabel, just before she was sold to French owners at Papeete some years ago. At that time she had fifty years’ sea service behind her, and had just completed a record round voyage in the Auckland-Niue Island trade. This little white-hulled clipper with her lofty yellow kauri masts and fine spread of canvas, was one of the port’s most regular deep-water traders. Year after year, right from the time that Mr H. Niccol sent her down the launching ways, Auckland had been her centre of operations. As a missionary ship and trader, her career had been an honourable and varied one, and she could well claim at that time to be the oldest island trader sailing regularly from a New Zealand port.

Built to a special design for the Melanesian Mission, the Southern Cross— to give her her original name, was launched in 1874. From that date until the time she was sold to the French at Tahiti in the 19205, she had, with the exception of one or two war-time voyages to San Francisco, been employed in the South Pacific. During the latter part of the year 1919,

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the Isabel, under the command of Captain John Farrell of Auckland, made a smart passage from Auckland to Frisco, via the Islands, and back to Wellington from San Pedro. She sailed from Auckland to Rarotonga, Rarotonga to Aitutaki, Aitutaki to Mangaia, Mangaia back to Rarotonga, Rarotonga to Frisco, which passage she made in thirty-five days. From Frisco she went to San Pedro, where she loaded case-oil for Wellington. She made the passage from San Pedro to East Cape in the good time of forty-one days, and ten days later she berthed at Wellington. Captain Farrell had posted some mail from San Pedro to his owners in Wellington, but he arrived there before it, which caused the Shipping Manager of Scales Shipping Line, under whose flag the Isabel was then sailing, to remark to the captain when he received it a few days after the ship’s arrival; “ Why, Captain, we’ll have to put you and your little Isabel on the Frisco-New Zealand Mail run after this performance.”

Up till then good fortune had attended her voyaging, for she had had a charmed life of immunity from disaster. Much thought was given to the vessel before the builders first laid her keel, and a prize offered for the best design was won by a Mr Weymouth. Later Captain Clayton, of well-known clippership fame, and a noted marine artist who died some years ago, was closely identified in the final details of her plans. As she first went to sea, the Southern Cross was a full-rigged barque, fitted with auxiliary steam engines. She had the first set of compound engines ever imported into New Zealand. Kauri timber was used in the hull, with frames of pohutukawa, and she was copper-fastened throughout. Under the missionary flag she gave yeoman service, running regularly from Auckland to Norfolk Island, and then to the Solomon and other northern groups.

When the Melanesian Mission offered the Isabel for sale there was no rush of would-be purchasers. For fifteen months she lay idly at her moorings. Auckland seafarers deemed her quite unfit for Island trading, and the price asked, £2,000, tempted no one. Then Captain William Ross, whose name as a shipowner and master in the Island trade will ever be linked with that of the Ysabel, inspected the little barque and offered £BOO

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for her. This offer was refused, but £9OO was accepted, and the Y sab el was his.

“My friends one and all,” said Captain Ross, “were surprised at my entertaining such an idea. I was thought to be mad when I offered £BOO for her. But after I had altered her to suit my own ideas, I found her to be the most suitable vessel for the Island trade I have ever put my foot aboard.”

Captain Ross bought the Ysabel, formerly Southern Cross, from Bishop Selwyn, Captain Clayton acting as agent. Prior to buying the Ysabel, Captain Ross had owned and run the fore-and-aft schooner Olive. A notice in the shipping column dated November 3, 1890 states that the Olive, schooner (sixty tons), Captain W. Ross, arrived back in port at Auckland from the Islands after a long absence. Captain Ross reported having met with very stormy weather on his passage south. Captain Ross had also been in command of the brigantine Meg Merrillees, and on one occasion he told me that the South Sea Island writer, Louis Becke, had sailed with him in this vessel as supercargo. He also told me that on one voyage to Sydney, a good while after Louis Becke had left him, he was staying ashore at an hotel in Sydney, and one evening on stepping out on to the footpath from the hotel door, a broken-down decrepit-looking man accosted him. It was his erstwhile supercargo Louis Becke. Captain Ross promptly asked him back into the hotel for a yam over old times up in his room. An officious porter thereupon barred the way and suggested throwing Louis Becke who, Captain Ross said, was suffering from a severe drinking bout, out on the street. Captain Ross, always a hasty, but a most kindhearted man, turned upon the porter indignantly, “Do you know who you are talking to ?” he demanded. “ This is my friend, Mr Louis Becke, the well-known South Sea Island author.” The porter beat a hasty retreat and Captain Ross and Louis Becke passed indoors without any further molestation.

This, then, was the shipmaster with whom I made my first deep water voyage to sea, and looking over my first discharge certificate from the Ysabel, I found that I joined her on March 27, 1901 and was discharged from her back in Auckland on January 25, 1902, when she lay up in the stream for the hurricane season of that year. I also noted on the discharge

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paper that the Ysabefs registered tonnage was only 149 tons. Not a very large vessel to be barque rigged, though as soon as Captain Ross bought her, he had altered her rig to that of a barquentine. Certainly she was not a very large vessel to have stood up to the battling with the elements, through hurricane and heavy gales, through steady trades and heart-breaking doldrums for nearly thirty years; oft-times dodging her way through dangerous coral reefs; making a landfall at some low atoll which in thick weather was hard to discern at even a few hundred yards, and loading cargo by boat under the lee of some lone island in the track of the strong south-east trades. She had stood up to it all through, and stood up to it well, for when I joined her away back in 1901 she was a staunch litdc barquentine carrying four headsails with a long tapering rigged out jib-boom, a square bent-foresail on her fore-yard, lower and tipper topsails and top-gallant sail, three staysails, fore and aft mainsail and main gaff topsail, and mizzen trysail. Her hull was painted dead white, while below water-line she was coppersheathed. She was flush-decked fore and aft with a large deckhouse amidships. In this was the master’s cabin, and in the saloon adjoining were bunks to accomodate a limited number of passengers. Below aft were quarters for the first and second mates, while also below decks was the fo’c’sle forrard. Her windlass was an old-time up and down lever contraption, and her main bilge pump was a hollow wooden baulk of timber with a wooden handle like a village pump.

I joined her early one morning as she lay in the old Auckland Graving Dock by the Sailors’ Home, and on going aboard, reported to the first mate, Mr George Schutze, afterwards to become so well known in the inter-colonial trade as master of the barquentines Neptune, lima and Mary Isabel and the barques Constance Craig and Mananui, and with whom I sailed afterwards in several of these fine little vessels. Mr Percy Quintal, of Norfolk Island, was acting second mate or bos’n in charge of a watch, and the ship’s cook was an elderly garrulous individual much prone to pander to the Old Man, who seemed to resent the often unnecessary attention bestowed upon him. Two white able seamen, and two Niue Islanders, with myself made up the rest of the crew. For the couple of days we

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remained in dock we scrubbed the ship right round below the water line. Long trailers of tropical growth were growing in profusion all over her copper and they took a lot of rubbing and scrubbing to remove. Having had previous sea service in the fast sailing scows Vixen and Vindex, I could not help admiring the fine lines of the Isabel below water-line. She had a very sharp entrance forward, and a beautifully clean run aft, and it was no wonder that she could beat to windward well, for she had a good hold in the water, though she was very narrowgutted.

On undocking after cleaning and painting, we were given a berth at the Queen Street Wharf and commenced taking in cargo for the South Sea Islands. General cargo our freight was termed, and it was general in every sense of the word. Crates of tinned biscuits, cases of tinned meats, tinned fruits, tinned sweets, crockery-ware, ironmongery, corrugated iron, bricksf cement, timber, paint, drums of linseed-oil and coils of rope werq stowed away in the hold. Each case or package was marked with a particular brand indicating its destination. It was like a lesson in geography of the South Seas, this stowing of the Isabel’s cargo.

“ Here you are, coming down,” would be yelled from the wharf. “ Two cases for Niuafoou, one for Keppel’s,” or “ What’s this?” “V.U.P. Vau Vau, corrugated iron and timber. Don’t mix that lot with the Niue cargo,” the mate would caution, as another sling was about to be landed in the hatch. And so on day after day until the hold was full, and we finished off with timber, tanks, and odds and ends on deck, where pens were also erected to accommodate three horses and about a dozen sheep. On the final day of loading a four-wheeled buggy and two light carts were trundled down.

“ Where the hell do they think we’re going to stow them contraptions,” growled Jack the Welshman, glancing ruefully around our already woefully encumbered decks. His question was soon answered by the Old Man calling out instructions to the mate to have them lashed in the mizzen rigging.

“ Unship the wheels, Mr Schutze, and lash the vehicles’ shafts uppermost in the rigging. They will carry all right there providing we don’t strike any real dirty weather.”

MaNr n v i The wooden barque -Manuniu was formerly the Danish barque Thora. She was about 400 or 500 tons iegi>,er. Captain George Schutzc was master and part owner of hei in the intercolonial trade up to 1915.

% ~ s I £.£•: 1 i SJ | U - -£ _ - Y. ~ <

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I thought of the wording on some of the bills of lading I had seen on the wharf, whereby the “ Master of the good ship Isabel had contracted to deliver the undermentioned goods at their destined ports in good order and condition,” providing that Acts of God, King’s enemies, Pirates, Mutiny, Shipwreck and numerous other disasters did not overtake her. In a way, it seemed to me that the captain was tempting the Fates with part of his cargo lashed in the mizzen rigging, though in the end they were delivered in good order to their South Sea Island owners.

We were the object of much attention and curiosity on the part of the little groups of people who would gather on the wharf and discuss our ship, her destination, and miscellaneous cargo, while we were loading, and many and varied were the comments we overheard.

t“ Is that right they’re going to set up a colony on some uninhabited island?” asked one newly arrived emigrant of another as they peered over the wharf coaming and eyed us askance as we were lashing the deck cargo down.

“Don’t know,” answered the other, “to look at her you’d think the Swiss Family Robinsons were setting out to find such an island though. Horses and carts and blimey, even sheep, what next will they be taking to sea? ” he added with a puzzled look on his face.

Astern of us lay the smart little brigantine Sir Henry. She had just arrived from Dunedin with a cargo of grain and potatoes, all stowed below hatches, and she showed up in strong contrast to our lumbered up vessel.

“I wouldn’t like to be shipmates with a cargo like that,” said her ordinary seaman to me as we stood talking together on the wharf. “ I like a clear deck, especially at night time. Why, you’ll never be able to haul the yards around with that fitter everywhere.” He went on in such a manner that I began to have grave doubts as to my own ship’s seaworthiness.

The bos’n, however, dismissed his remarks with a curt “ He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” when I mentioned the matter to him, and straightway went on to tell me of other voyages he had made to the Islands in even smaller vessels than the Isabel, with cargoes that to me seemed cumbersome enough for a larger ship.

E

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The tug Durham came alongside one morning and. took us out to an anchorage in stream, where we squared things up generally and awaited a fair wind. The following day the wind came away strong out of the sou-west, and by mid day we were off before it with Nukualofa, the main town in the Tongan group, as our first port of call. We slipped past North Head, where a squad of convicts from the Mt Eden gaol, working out in the open under the watchful eye of a uniformed warder, waved us a friendly farewell, then Rangitoto, the island mountain that stands on guard outside the Auckland harbour was passed, and we romped along heading for the open sea. That night in the first watch we dropped Cuvier Island light astern and headed NNE. for Tonga. I had the wheel from eight o’clock till ten, and during that two hours I first experienced the terrible qualms of seasickness. Ever since that first night at sea in the Tsabel, I have always been able to sympathize with those who are prone to suffer from this distressing malady. Alternately I retched and steered, and steered and retched. The violent motion of the little barquentine running with a fresh breeze on the quarter through a sea which at the time seemed mountainous beyond all my wildest imaginings, sent me into such a continual state of retching that at last Mr Schutze, the mate, called Ernie and said, “ It’s not four bells yet, but take her now and let the young fellow lie down for awhile, he’s terribly seasick.”

I staggered along to a comparatively dry spot on the main hatch just abaft the galley and lay there like a log till morning. What did it matter, I thought, if the ship dived clean to the bottom in one of her wildest plunges! It would be a good ending to all my misery, and much as I loved the sea, what was the use of loving it if I were to suffer like this every time I came to sea. Regularly, through the night, at intervals of about ten minutes, I strained and retched and brought up bile as bitter as gall. I had a hazy notion that above me reeled a cluster of masts and straining sails, which hurtled to and fro with monotonous regularity, that across me green seas and flung spray flew with spiteful vehemence every other minute, that a low moaning from the horses penned on deck proclaimed the fact that they too were suffering in a like manner to myself.

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Then Mititau came along with an orange. With a kindliness I would never have thought him capable of, he helped me to raise my head and said, “You suck him Fetch, him make you better. Mititau too much flem (meaning friend) for you.”

Mititau may have been the descendant of cannibals, and only an ignorant Kanaka, but to me, on my first night at sea, he was a veritable ministering angel. Every half-hour or so he would come along to where I lay prostrate with the violent qualms or retching, and inquire as to how I was.

“By and by Fetch you make him all right aye? Plenty kaikai bull-a-ma-cow (i.e. corned beef), plenty yam, plenty taro.”

“I hope so anyhow, Jimmy,” I answered, though inwardly I had grave doubts about the matter. Ernie, Mititau and I were in the mate’s watch and at eight bells, four o’clock next morning, the mate came along and asked me how I was feeling. I told him that I felt a trifle better and that I could still take my trick at the wheel.

“ Very well,” he replied. “ Come along now and take her then, you will probably feel better standing there steering than lying down and giving in to it.”

His words proved true, for I had not been at the wheel more than half an hour when I felt better and, though as weak as a kitten, I managed to keep the ship running along on her course. Never shall I forget that first morning at sea when the dawn came up over the eastern sea’s rim. The wind still blew fresh and strong out of the sou-west, a romping fair wind for us. The little barquentine simply flew along before it under all plain sail. The yards were laid nearly square, while the main and mizzen booms were guyed right out, and when she mounted the top of a high sea and lurched to windward, as much strain was put upon the guy tackles as was put upon the sheets when she rolled to leeward. No land was in sight. This was something new to me, for I had never made an off-shore voyage before. I stole furtive glances back over my shoulder when the stem swung high up on to the crest of a following sea, to see if I could catch a last glimpse of the Great Barrier Island, but no, it was all sea and sky and flying clouds, and not a vestige of land to be seen anywhere.

“ Looking for the land ? ” asked the mate as he came aft and caught me unawares on one of these occasions.

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“Yes,” I replied, “I was just trying to see if I could catch a sight of the Great Barrier.”

The mate laughed out aloud. “ Why,” he said, “ the Great Barrier is a good eighty miles astern now, so you’d need splendid eyesight to see it from here.”

I realized then that we’d been running a good eight knots for the last twelve hours and that he was right. “ Don’t get looking astern any more. Keep your eye on the ship’s head and the compass. She’ll take all the watching you can give her in this sea,” cautioned the mate as he went along the deck to have a look how the horses and sheep were faring. From then on I devoted all my time and attention to the steering, watching the ship’s head and meeting her, with the helm, as with a reeling sweep downwards into an enormous hollow between two huge sloping seas, she followed it up with a staggering climb to the crest of another, poised awhile as though to regain her breath, and then repeated the whole performance. I was fascinated by this headlong flight, when, at one moment one would be watching the sudden dazzling burst of snow-white froth around the bows as they sheared through the green of a towering comber, and the next instant finding oneself gazing into a liquid wall of white foam-flecked sea which had reared up to leeward and was now running parallel with the ship. The colour of the sea changed with lightning-like rapidity in the growing dawn, and when, with a burst of golden light, the sun itself shot high above a falling sea top, its beauty was intensified a hundredfold. I was too young in those wonderful far-off days to ponder much upon the ‘ way of a ship at sea ’ but as the years have slipped by, I have never, in all my varied experiences, been so struck with the sheer beauty of anything in nature as that day-breaking scene of long ago, when I stood my trick at the wheel on my first off-shore cruise.

Breakfast that morning was a farce so far as I was concerned. I stayed at the wheel until seven bells, half-past seven, and then Mititau coming to relieve me, I went forrard, but one glance down into that sickly copra-smelling fo’c’sle started the nausea all over again. I felt that I simply could not venture down below. Even if I had to spend the whole of this voyage on deck, better that, I thought, than to essay a sojourn even of a few

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minutes into that dark evil-smelling place. There was a skylight underneath the windlass which in fine weather could be opened, and so allow a fresh current of air to pass through the fo’c’sle find up the companionway, but this was not fine enough weather to allow that procedure. Running fast before a strong breeze, the Isabel scampered along in company with the marching seas, overhauling some and burying her fine bows up to the knightheads, flooding the fore-deck knee deep and compelling the watch below to keep the companionway closed most of the time. No, I decided most emphatically, the fo’c’sle was no place for me yet awhile, so I found a seat on a kedge anchor which was lashed to the lee side of the galley and here, out in God’s pure air, with the sun streaming down upon me, and the wind blowing wisps of sea spume filled with the strong tang of ozone over me, I felt that now, at last, I was indeed recuperating.

“ What! not having any breakfast ? ” called the cook, leaning out of the lee galley door and surveying me with an incredulous look on his wrinkled old face.

“ No, well at least not down below there in that smelly hole,” I replied. “As soon as I put my head over that open scuttle I feel as though I’ll go on being seasick for the rest of my life.”

“Ho ho! ” he laughed, “you’ll soon get over that, me lad. Why, when I was a boy making my first voyage I was as sick as a dog for days on end, and all the sympathy I got was to be teased with a lump of fat pork thrust in me face, and told to quit shamming an’ up aloft an’ overhaul them buntlines.”

“ Well, you must have shipped with a crowd of inhuman bullies,” I replied, “ and I can tell you, cook, I’m not shamming seasickness. Why, I’ve eaten nothing since we left the Hauraki Gulf the day before yesterday.”

“ Well, that’s the worst thing you can do,” said the cook. “ Here, have ago at this plate of dry hash. If yer get outside-a-that it’ll put new life inter yer bones.” He handed me out a plate full of dry hash well seasoned with onions, thyme, and pepper and salt. Down below in that fo’c’sle the very mention of such a dish would have upset me all over again, but up here in this invigorating air it acted like a tonic on me, after I had eaten every bit of it.

“Well, how did yer like that?” queried the cook, as I handed him back the plate.

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“ Best meal I’ve ever tasted in my life,” I answered.

“ That’s the stuff,” said the cook. “ Here, drink this mug of coffee now an’ we’ll have you over the te-gallant yard for exercise before you can say Jack Robinson.”

I drank the coffee, and thanking the cook I hunted out a sheltered spot on the main hatch in which to spend my watch off duty, as I still did not intend to venture down below. By the end of the third day at sea I had become so inured to the violent caperings of the Isabel that I had taken possession of my bunk down in the fo’c’sle again. I hated the place though, it was so dark and full of huge winged cockroaches and copra bugs, to say nothing of rats, all of which thrived wonderfully well on the copra cargoes with which the ship was mostly loaded. However, a man could not stay up on deck night and day all the time, even though we were running to the northward and fine tropical weather. There were nights when our decks were continually drenched by flying seas and heavy rain squalls, so I had no alternative but take up my abode below decks. One night, while dead asleep in my watch below, I was suddenly awakened by an excruciating pain in one of my big toes. I let out an unearthly yell which caused my two watchmates, Ernie and Mititau, to start up in alarm.

“What the hell?” called Ernie from the depths of his bunk forward of me, while Mititau muttered something in his native language which sounded to me like “Aitu ma-mungi-hau,” meaning, he told me afterwards, that “ The ghosts were coming.”

“ It’s all right now,” I replied in answer to their repeated inquiries. “It was only one of those rats making a midnight meal off my big toe.”

“ Oh,” said Ernie, who had sailed on the previous voyage in the ship, “ you’ll soon get used to that. You generally wake up before they get through the hard outer skin.”

“ Never kaikai toe belong-a-me,” said Mititau sleepily from the bunk below me.

“ No, you Quakos have skin on the feet all-the-same porka,” said Ernie, rolling over and going off to sleep again. I lay awake for what seemed to me to be hours after the rat’s attack. The pawl bitts, a great hardwood post, ran up through the middle of the fo’c’sle and being let into the kelson on the lower end,

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and bolted to the deck beams, it creaked and groaned with every rise and fall of the ship. In fact, every plank-butt and timber groaned and squealed with such monotonous regularity that at last I found it hard to determine which were the rat’s squealings and which the ship’s. However, the main thing was that I had conquered the seasickness and for this I was more than thankful, so all of these other little inconveniences seemed trivial in comparison to that terrible affliction. Henceforth I was able to enjoy the voyage and the wild headlong flight over boundless seas of ever increasing blueness —seas that day after day seemed to expand farther and farther into the illimitable blue, until at last I began to think that there would never appear again a break on that even line which day after day encircled us.

As we approached the tropics I began to look forward to being on deck in the early morning watch from four o’clock to eight, for then the appearance of the sky at dawn was a wonderful sight. As I stood at the wheel during these early morning hours, I found ample time to enjoy the beauty of those ephemeral scenes splashed across the eastern sky, seemingly for my sole benefit. At times I could almost imagine that I had at last reached those wondrous tropic isles of my boyhood dreams, and that the ship, instead of flying along before the urge of a strong south-east trade wind, was now transported to that celestial world above me, where clouds appeared as beautiful islands, mountains and headlands, and the sky took the place of a sea of azure blue and gold.

Chapter 8

“Land Oh”

“Tand oh! Land Oh!” The cry was raised by the starI i board watch on our twelfth day out at daybreak.

“ That’ll be Eua,” said Ernie, when we were both fully awake.

“ What’s Eua?” I asked, curious to know what this first land was we were now rapidly approaching.

“Oh, a big lump of an island about ten miles or so from Nukualofa, our first port. It’s a good spot to make for, a landfall coming to Tonga, as the main island of Tonga-tabu is very low-lying,” he answered.

We were now properly in the grip of the strong south-east trades and the little barquentine was fairly flying along with this fine fair wind.

“ Chain up! get the cable ranged on deck,” came the order from on deck.

“All hands on deck, get the chain up,” called the bos’n down the scuttle. Out we tumbled, and donning some clothes, we were soon on deck armed with long chain hooks and pulling the heavy studded link cable up from below. Vehea, the native boy, was directed to go below and keep the cable clear as it came up from the locker, which was beneath the fo’c’sle floor. As we ranged the cable out on deck abaft the windlass I realized that it was the smell of mud from the chain locker which, mingling with the smell of copra, had caused such a medley of odours in our ill-ventilated quarters on the passage from Auckland.

Compared with the almost luxurious crew’s quarters on many of our modem vessels, I often marvel at the influence the sea had in those days over many a boy, causing him to forsake a good home and comfortable bed for a fo’c’sle life in small sailing vessels like the Tsabel. It only goes to show that the boys of to-day would be only too keen to venture forth as did their fathers and forefathers before them. The pity of it is that the chances of a boy adopting a seafaring career nowadays

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are very few and far between. The very class of ship whose existence bred the sea spirit in the boys of yesterday has, I fear, passed away, and unless the State takes a hand and puts into commission a fine sailing training ship now and again, we may in the years ahead allow our mercantile marine to drift into the hands of foreigners.

We flew past the island of Eua, or Eooa, as it is sometimes spelt. It is about thirty miles round and 600 feet high. It is rocky and barren in appearance and not at all like a South Sea island of coral reefs and waving palms. Presently, right ahead I saw a long line of waving palm tops apparently growing out of the blue, wind-whipped sea. This then, was my first sight of a real coral island.

“ That is Tonga-tabu, right ahead there,” said Percy Quinta], the bos’n, to me as I stood and gazed on the scene that was rapidly unfolding itself before my eyes. Quickly my mind went back over all that I had read of the South Sea Islands. Scenes from Treasure Island, By Reef and Palm, Coral Island, and Sir John Barrow’s Mutiny on the Bounty came to me in quick succession. But there was no time now for idle cogitation, for in no time, it seemed, we were across the dividing channel between Eua and Tonga-tabu, and running up between the coral reefs for the anchorage at Nukualofa.

“ Up aloft there to the te-gallant yard, and call out as you see shoal water ahead,” called the Old Man to me as I stood gazing at the palm fringed horizon ahead and to port. From the te-gallant yard the view was grand. Ahead and to starboard were innumerable reefs and small palm-clad islets, while all along our port side appeared the main island of Tonga-tabu. The water was so clear that I could plainly see the bottom at several fathoms depth. We surged along up a narrow channel between reefs until we came abreast of a small island where we took aboard a native pilot. He landed on deck from his whaleboat clad in a brass-bound monkey pea-jacket and a lava-lava instead of trousers. He did not seem to take much part in navigating the ship in to the anchorage, in fact as far as the Old Man was concerned he might just as well have not boarded us, for he just greeted him with a “ Hullo, Pilot—Malolele,” meaning “ good day” in Tongan language. The Pilot seemed to take it all as

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a matter of course and did not seem to resent the Skipper’s usurping of his authority in the least. For the benefit of those who have not visited Tonga I would describe Nukualofa as a typical South Sea Island town, strewn in a spasmodic confusion of white painted buildings and native thatched houses along the foreshore of coral rocks and sand which gleamed dazzling white in the bright sunlight. A wharf ran out from about the centre of the township, and keeping it on our starboard hand we sailed along and let go the anchor off one of the large trading firm’s cluster of buildings ashore.

No sooner was the anchor down than the decks were crowded with natives, who boarded us from boats and lighters on each side, while others tumbled aboard from over the bows out of numerous canoes, which paddled around underneath our long jib-boom. The majority of our visitors had their heads plastered with lime, which, on inquiry of one of them, I found was put there to cause their black hair to turn red, a colour which they greatly admired. When they became heated the lime would run down with the perspiration into their eyes causing them considerable pain and annoyance, but they put up with this discomfiture uncomplainingly.

While lying at anchor off Nukualofa the Danish barque Julie of Copenhagen arrived to load copra for Europe. We of the Isabel's crew boarded her on many occasions and yarned with her crew, mostly young Danes and Norwegians. I greatly admired their fine ship and secretly envied those fine young fellows their knowledge of practical seamanship. In fact, so great was my admiration of this ship and her crew that I tried to get clear of the Isabel and ship in her. I longed to make the passage home in her round Cape Horn, and to see with my own eyes the great continental ports of which those boys spoke with such casual ease. But it was no use, our Old Man would not give me my discharge, and the Danish captain would not take me without it. As it turned out it was just as well, I suppose, for later on, while the Julie was still loading among the islands of the Friendly group, she piled up and became a total wreck on one of the numerous reefs, which abound in these waters, so I would not have reached Europe in her in any case. Many of the vessels which afterwards traded for years between New

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Zealand and Australia, were salvaged from different reefs and islands of the South Pacific.

We discharged a good part of our cargo at Nukualofa and then sailed for Hapai. Before leaving I had a day ashore with Percy Quintal. He understood the Tongans, as in fact he did all the South Sea Islanders, better than any man I have ever met. His quiet spoken manner seemed to appeal to them, and understanding their language fairly well, we were able to converse quite freely with them. During the day we went to a native gathering in one of their large meeting houses. After a lot of singing or chanting, and dancing, they handed round kava in coconut shells. It was my first experience of this queer tasting drink and I cannot say that I took much of a fancy to it. To me it tasted more like pepper and water than anything else.

For several weeks we cruised in the Isabel among the Friendly Islands visiting Hapai, Vavau, Keppel and Niuafoou Islands. Vavau with its beautiful deep land-locked harbour, which is, I should say, one of the best harbours in the whole Pacific, interested me immensely. The great cave at the mouth of the harbour which can only be entered by boat is a wonderful sight. Inside it is like a huge cathedral, and the singing of hundreds of birds of all kinds which enter by an opening in the roof, very ably takes the place of a mighty organ playing. It was inside this cave, on one occasion, when several of our ship’s company were visiting it in one of our surf boats that Jack, one of our able seamen, lost his head and yelled to the rest of us to pull out, as he swore that the roof would fall in on us. Aboard the ship he had been a bit of a bully, but here in the depths of this great cave his nerve absolutely left him, nor did he regain his usual manner until we were safely outside once more.

Keppel, or Varraders Island, brings back memories to me of a typical coral island of boyhood’s dreams. Of no great height it has the orthodox lagoon on its lee side, outside of which a long white coral reef causes the league-long rollers to crash in a smother of seething foam. The whole scene is dominated by the towering bulk of Boscawen Island which lies about seven miles off north-by-west and rises in height to a peak of two thousand feet above sea-level. These islands lie in about 15 0 525. and 173 0 50W. The Isabel drew too much water to

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go inside the lagoon at Keppel Island, so whenever we called there we would lie just outside the entrance and work the cargo out and in by boats. We carried three large surf boats and to distinguish them from a distance the Old Man had them all painted different colours, red, white and blue. It meant a hard pull to take the boats in through the lagoon entrance against the strong off-shore trade wind, but it was great fun coming out, when with a big lug sail set we would all race for the ship. One day while lying under the lee of Keppel Island, a small white-painted fore and aft schooner came flying around the far point of the island and made along for the entrance in the reef. Several of us aboard the Isabel watched her with interest as she came romping along towards us. Hauling closer on the wind as she neared the opening in the reef, she suddenly put in a couple of short tacks, and then shooting right up into the wind’s eye, she luffed through that narrow passage like a deep-keeled yacht and was soon at anchor in calm water off the trading station. It was a splendid piece of seamanship and we all heartily acclaimed it as such, when the mate coming along the deck also joined in with us.

“That is the German schooner Elfreda from Samoa,” he said. “ She is a regular trader here also, so her skipper should know the place all right, but still it takes a bit of nerve to take even a small vessel like that in through that narrow passage.”

Often while lying at Keppel Island I would be night watchman, and many a night’s good fishing I put in lying under the lee of this island. There were fish of all kinds, shapes and colours to be had there, though some were not fit to eat, being poisonous, as many tropical fish are.

The island of Niuafoou was a regular place of call for the Isabel when I served in her. It lies 15 0 30S. 175° 41W. and is about three miles long and five to six hundred feet high. This island is remarkable because in the crater at the top is a lake of pure fresh water. Up on the rim of the crater one can look down on the beating surf all roupd the island on one hand, and the placid deep lake on the other. The coconuts here are among the largest to be found in the South Pacific. Of late years Niuafoou has been known to tourists and island passengers by steamers as Tin Can Island, owing to the mail being slung

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overboard from the steamer in a sealed up tin can. A native would then swim out and bring the tin ashore, the landing place being a very bad one for boats. Niuafoou has no one living on it now, as after a very severe eruption all the inhabitants were evacuated to other islands of the group. There is only one spot where a vessel can anchor, and this is a small sandy patch on the west side with fifteen fathoms of water a cable’s length from the shore. It is too close for a safe berth. This anchorage used to serve us quite well in the little Isabel, but larger vessels did not often make use of it as, if the wind shifted suddenly, thev would never be able to work out to sea.

On one occasion we ran down to Niuafoou from Keppel Island, which is not far distant, and on arriving within sight of the island we saw a big white-painted wooden barque flying the Norwegian flag, standing off and on under the lee of the land. As we drew nearer our skipper signalled, “ Why don’t you anchor?”

Up went several successive hoists of flags in reply, from the barque’s mizzen topmast, explaining that they had let go their port anchor several days previously and lost it and one hundred and twenty fathoms of cable. We ran in and anchored the Isabel on the fifteen fathom patch on the lee side of the island, and as the weather looked favourable, the Old Man set out in one of our surf boats with four of us from forrard to intercept the barque. On boarding her, our skipper offered to pilot the barque in and anchor her alongside of our ship, to which arrangement the Norwegian skipper readily agreed, as he would never have succeeded in taking in his full consignment of copra, standing off and on and working the boats. The Norwegian captain explained to our Old Man that he had let go his port anchor on what he had believed to be the sandy patch, but that evidently he had been well away from it, as the anchor went away with a roar, taking every link of cable out of the chain locker, and snapping it off where the end was shackled around the heel of the foremast.

Captain Ross of the Isabel always went ahead of the ship in one of the boats when making this anchorage, and looking through a box with a glass bottom in it while holding it down in the water, he could see the bottom quite clearly, and then on

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reaching the right position would call out to the mate aboard when to let go the anchor. Had the Captain of the Silas, the Norwegian barque, done this he would probably have saved his port anchor and cable.

At the time of which I write a good price was being obtained for copra in Europe, and in our cruising round about among the scattered islands of the South Pacific in the Isabel we often came upon German, Norwegian and Danish vessels loading for European ports. Many of these ships, like the Julie of Copenhagen, which I have previously mentioned, were wrecked on coral reefs and islets in these waters.

The Isabel called at many out-of-the-way spots in these tropical waters in those days. On one occasion we left Apia, Samoa, for the Danger Islands, and had aboard a party of Americans whose intention it was to start a trading station in this group. These islands he in io° 48W. and io° 565., and extend east and west for ten miles. Puka-puka, the northernmost of the group, is the main island, and Koko and Rutoe Islands are nearby. They are connected by a submarine causeway on which the barque John Williams was wrecked in 1864. Strong equatorial currents are frequent hereabouts and caused the wreck of the John Williams. At the time we visited here in the Isabel in 1901 we were not able to make a landing as there is no opening through the reef and the strong currents kept sweeping us away from the group. We therefore sailed from here for the small island of Nassau a little to the southward. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, for Nassau, the Old Man told me, was only about fifty feet high and one and a half miles long. I was doing my trick at the wheel one morning when the skipper came along from his room in the midship deckhouse and taking the spokes from me said, “ Away up aloft there to the fore te-gallant yard, and see if ye can see any sign of land dead ahead.” I ran forrard, and climbing aloft was soon perched up on the te-gallant yard. I looked ahead and out on the port and starboard bows, but no, I could not see any sign of land, no matter how I stared and stared. “Aloft there! can yc no sec any sign of anything?” called the Old Man in an impatient voice.

"No sir, I can't see anything at all," I replied.

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Calling one of the native seamen to the wheel the skipper ran forrard and was soon seated on the yard beside me. “ Ah! I thought so, it takes an old man to show ye,” said Captain Ross. “ See there, a little out on the port bow, what’s that ? ”

I looked and looked again, and then at last I saw it; a couple of palm trees apparently growing up out of the wastes of sea, which lay before us. It was the island. “Yes, I can see what looks to be the tops of palm trees over there, sir,” I answered.

“ Yes, that is Nassau,” replied the captain. “ We’ll be close up under the lee of it in half an hour’s time.” And sure enough we were, and lying there with the yards aback we took aboard several boat loads of copra in sacks, and landed some stores. One white man and a few natives were the only human inhabitants of this outlandish little spot, and they had a pitiful tale to tell of a severe hurricane which had visited them some months previously, doing great damage to the coconut trees and destroying all their stock of fresh water. This place was besieged by millions of flies of the ordinary household variety. They invaded the ship and got into every nook and comer and did not leave us until we were well away from the island, bowling along in the grip of the strong south-east trades again. Before we left Nassau we landed a four hundred gallon tank of water to relieve the water shortage there until the next rainfall.

Chapter 9

“Heave Away for Auckland”

Everything at some time or another comes to an end and so did my first cruise to the South Sea Islands in the barquentine Isabel. After a final call at Niue or Savage Island we ran across to Nukualofa in the Tongan Group again with the SE. trade wind ‘sitting in the shoulder of our sails,’ and then made final preparations for our return voyage to Auckland. Niue is only a small island some nine miles long from south to north-west and is about two hundred feet high and quite flat. It lies in i9°S., 169° 50W. The people are most hospitable, and the menfolk good seamen, and here we used to obtain beautifully plaited hats and ornamental canoes. The only trouble for visiting vessels at Niue is that the three anchorages are all open roadsteads on the west side of the island. During our cruises in the Isabel we often visited Niue and were loth to leave these kindhearted people and their beautiful island. However December was well advanced and the Old Man was worrying about the approaching hurricane season, so from Nukualofa we finally took our departure for Auckland. We carried a part cargo of copra, candle nuts, and bananas in bunches hanging up in the hold. We also had aboard a lot of salvaged gear from the Danish barque Julie, such as anchors and cables, sails and running gear and the like.

On the voyage down to Auckland some of the Julie ’s smaller square sails were cut down and made into square sails for the Isabel. Captain Ross was nothing if he was not forthright, and to see him have one of the wrecked barque’s te-gallants’ls spread out on deck, and one of the Isabel’s little topsails laid out on top of it, while he cut the whole centre of that big sail out to make a topsail for his own little vessel, made me realize that here was a man who did not believe in dilly-dallying.

In later years I made several voyages to the Islands but that first experience as a youth always stands out most clearly in my memory. Even after all these years I can still call to mind

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the wonderful singing of the Tongan deck passengers, especially at evening in the dog watches, when their fine voices would blend like the harmony of a great organ. Many of our white passengers I can still clearly remember, as they would sit on the little afterskylight and, when the Old Man or the mate were not near, yam with me as I stood at the wheel during my two hour trick. One in particular that I remember was Mr, afterwards Sir, Percy Smith, who often travelled with us from island to island. He was the author of several books on Maori and South Sea Island lore, viz. The Kermadec Islands, Niue-Fekau or Savage Island and Hawaiki ; and was a veritable mine of information on these subjects. He was a fine gentleman. The passage from Nukualofa to Auckland took twenty-one days, calms and head winds being met with most of the way. Before we reached Auckland the bananas in the hold all ripened, and we had bananas for breakfast, dinner and tea.

I shall never forget our sailing up the Hauraki Gulf again. We had been away nine or ten months, but it seemed years to me. All the old familiar landmarks appeared to take on a homely look as we passed each in turn, Great Barrier Island, Little Barrier, Kawau, Tiri Tiri, and finally old Rangitoto, past which we flew before a freshening northerly breeze, which carried us right up to the anchorage off the wharves. What did we care if the water over the side was a dirty muddy colour, instead of the clear tropical blue, or if the trees ashore were not the long familiar coconut palms of the islands, we were home again in dear old Auckland.

Looking back upon my first voyage to sea in the barquentine Isabel, I picture again our getting under way from some outlying islands, our decks crowded with native passengers, our Niue-boy boat-crews, garlanded with tropical flowers, singing the Island Farewell song:

“ Good-bye, my friend, kae fano noe fai

Au, ha koe fia evaeva kihe lalolagi.”

Chorus:

“Oh I never will forget you

La la la la la la la la

Niue Nakai galo e au.”

F

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I see again Captain Ross jumping in among a whole crowd of native deck passengers and calling out vigorously in Tongan the command to “Fusi Towla! Fusi Towla!—Heave up anchor! Heave up anchor.” I don’t know whether my Tongan spelling is correct but it always sounded like that. I could never imagine for a moment a captain of one of our modem passenger vessels treating his passengers thus, but it had the desired effect aboard the Isabel, for our passengers would jump to that infernal windlass, and in no time would have our anchor ‘ awash apeak and clear ’ from a depth of often fifteen or twenty fathoms. It certainly could never be said of Captain Ross that he was inclined to pander to his native passengers. However, wherever we called at in the Isabel in those days the natives always preferred coming as passengers with us rather than going from island to island in one of their own native schooners. These vessels were not always as reliable as the white man’s ship.

In the year 1890 a small native schooner left Nukualofa in the Tongan Group for Wallis Island, on September t, clearing at the Customs there with eight passengers for whom the usual supply of native stores and water was certified to be on board. It appears, however, that the passengers were augmented by several additions before leaving port and the schooner calling at Niuafoou Island en route took in more there until she had nearly forty persons aboard. After a night of jollification at Niua Foo she proceeded on her voyage, but about the ninth day of the next month she made the island of Vavau in distress, the native master reporting that he had been unable to find Wallis Island. As may be imagined the company aboard had suffered terribly through lack of food and water, having been completely without either for eight days before making Vavau. Many were ill and all were emaciated and three native women had died. The Collector of Customs at Vavau gave orders for the prompt relief of the famine-stricken people and he also made arrangements for the schooner to proceed to Nukualofa, where the native master was tried for the manslaughter of the three women, and for making false declarations to the Collector of Customs at Nukualofa.

After discharging our small cargo at the old wooden Queen Street wharf we were towed out into stream and there moored

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the ship for the hurricane season (from December to March). Mititau, the Niue Islander, was left aboard as watchman and the following day we all presented ourselves at the Shipping Office to receive our money and were discharged. As the crew of the Isabel were being paid off, the whole crew of an intercolonial barque trooped in and lined up along the counter preparatory to being signed on for an intercolonial voyage. Even to an inexperienced eye like mine, they looked, to a man, every inch of the professional sailing ship seamen, and I made a mental resolution that my next ship would be an intercolonial barque and my next shipmates a similar crowd to this barque’s crew. When I think of the difficulty present-day boys experience in trying to get away to sea, my mind flies back to those times in the early nineteen-hundreds, when Auckland was the port of registry for dozens of small sailing vessels. The three main wharves, Queen’s, Railway Wharf and Hobson Street Wharf, now Princes Wharf, were in those days seldom seen without a few barques or barquentines lying alongside, loading or unloading. And these same old wooden wharves, that shook and rattled frightfully whenever a heavy horse-drawn vehicle passed along them, were the happy hunting grounds of embryo windjammer sailors of the early nineteen-hundreds.

Here we would foregather in little groups or stroll around in our ‘go ashore suits’ of blue serge, with the inevitable doublebreasted square-cut coats, which to our minds, gave us the bona fide stamp of the real blue-water sailormen.

Chapter 10

Intercolonial Sailing Vessels

Among the early sailing vessels trading out of Auckland were . the barque Novelty, built by H. Niccol of Auckland, and the barques Alice Cameron and Kate. They were owned by Henderson and MacFarlane and were known as the Circular Saw Line. The Novelty, says Mr Brett in his book White Wings, made one voyage to London and back to Auckland. She made a fast passage home, and came out in ninety-two days from the Lizard. The brigantine Defiance and the barque Northern Chief were both built at Auckland in the 188 os by Mr McKay. These little vessels ran for years in the intercolonial trade and both were fast sailers. The Defiance was twice ashore on Kaipara bar, but each time she got off. The first occasion was on May 29, 1886, when she stranded on Tory Shoal, but was refloated undamaged. Captain McKay had charge of her then. The next time was August 27, 1906, when she stranded on the North Spit, and this time Captain White was in command.

The Defiance was inward-bound for Kaipara Harbour on this occasion. The wind was off the land and the brigantine was working in tack for tack on the strong flood tide. While standing over towards the treacherous ‘ Graveyard ’ on the starboard tack, she stood on too far, and smelling the ground, she failed to come about when the helm was put down. She stuck fast in the sand, and after pounding up and down for awhile, during which time the false keel came off and floated up alongside, the ship eventually came to rest hard and fast in the sand.

Mr, afterwards Captain, Leonard Robertson, of the New Zealand Marine Department, was second mate of the Defiance at this time, and Mr, afterwards Captain, R. N. Anderson of Auckland, was one of the able seamen. Just before the Defiance struck, Mr Robertson remarked to Mr Anderson, “ He’s standing over too far on this tack, Bob. She’ll take the ground if he does not put her about.”

Next minute the order ‘ ’bout ship ’ came, but too late to save

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the Defiance from stranding. When the tide began to ebb all hands got ashore from the end of the bowsprit and pitched tents made of sails above high water mark. As the weather remained fair with no sea running the Defiance lay safe enough in her bed of sand. The master and first mate went to Auckland to attend the Marine Inquiry into the stranding, and Mr Robertson was left in charge. A gang of Maoris was sent down to the ship to stand by with the second mate in the event of the vessel moving on the making tides. While the Captain and first mate were away, Mr Robertson and his gang of Maoris took a heavy anchor out dead astern on a long wire hawser to keep the ship stem on to the ground swell which came in on each flood tide. During an extra high spring tide some time later the ship began to work about more in her bed of sand, and on heaving away with all the purchases they could rig on the stern hawser, and with the extra assistance of a small tug, the Defiance was refloated and brought around to a safe anchorage inside Kaipara Heads. This, I believe, was one of the very few occasions on which a vessel had been stranded on the dangerous ‘ Graveyard,’ and then refloated again.

The brig Wild Wave, Captain Bull, stranded on the North Spit on May 8, 1890, was also lucky enough to get off, but in a very damaged condition. She was loaded with timber for Sydney, and one of the men who was in her on that occasion told me that the damage to her hull was so bad that they caught fish swimming around in her hold among the timber when she was taken back to Helensville, where she was condemned. Here also, on the same North Spit at Kaipara, the barque Sophia R. Luhrs, Captain Marks, stranded on June 5, 1888 and became a total loss. The Auckland-built barque Northern Chief had better luck than the above-mentioned vessels, for although she traded for years in and out over the Kaipara bar while in the intercolonial trade, yet it failed to make her a victim on its treacherous shoals.

During the war of 1914-18 the Northern Chief was converted into a three-masted fore and aft schooner, and on a voyage from San Francisco to Auckland under Captain Duncan McDonald of the Bluff, made a very smart voyage. She was afterwards hulked and finally was towed outside the harbour and burnt on the rocky shores of Rangitoto Island. Her comrade in arms, the

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brigantine Defiance, was also hulked in the end, and when she became too decrepit for that menial duty, she was towed down to Brown s Island and beached in front of the homestead there. Here her bones remained for many years in company with several other old vessels.

Both the Northern Chief and the Defiance were built by Captain McKay about where Leyland and O’Brien’s sawmills now stand on the Western Auckland waterfront. I once sailed in the Northern Chief, and during a passage from Newcastle, N.S.W., coal laden to Auckland, she proved herself a smart little sailer and a good sea boat, beating all the way across the Tasman Sea against stormy easterly weather and high seas in great style. During the height of one of these gales we passed, shortened down to lower topsails, under the lee of a huge intercolonial liner who was proceeding slowed down into the teeth of the gale. She appeared to be making frightfully heavy weather of it, with flying spray and spume sweeping her from end to end. We, in the little Northern Chief, were riding like a duck over the crests of those high flung seas, and what few passengers were about her decks, eyed us askance from the shelter of securely lashed canvas dodgers.

The brigantine Linda Weber was another Auckland, or rather Mahurangi-built vessel. Mahurangi is a beautiful harbour about twenty-eight miles north from Auckland where numerous intercolonial, Island-trading, and coasting vessels were built in the early days. The Linda Weber traded for many years out of Auckland and was a smart and seaworthy little vessel. Whilst in the South Sea Island trade, Captain Owens, who later had charge of the barquentine Pendle Hill, was master of Linda Weber. She was posted missing in March 1901 whilst on a voyage from Gisborne to Ngunguru. Captain S. McKenzie was in charge then with a crew of six. The Linda Weber was 114 tons register and built in 1877.

Brigantines were a very common rig on the Auckland waterfront in the early 1890s. In the shipping columns of those days names such as the brigantines Prosperity (Captain G. McKenzie), Meg. Merrilles (Captain W. Ross), and dozens of others kept appearing. Later on came the Sir Henry, afterwards converted into a ketch and lost with all hands off East Cape. The Stanley

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struck a rock and holed herself off Mercury Islands, timber laden, and was towed into Auckland floating on her timber cargo, where she was condemned. Among the Island-trading brigantines were the Magellan Cloud, Ryno, Myrtle, Borealis, all well known vessels in the 1880s and early 1890s. Compared with the size of modem steam and oil driven vessels of today, how infinitesimal were these old time sea wanderers. The Northern Chief, built in 1886, was only 125 feet in length and 27 feet beam by 12 feet depth of hold, and 263 registered tonnage, and the Defiance was smaller still, yet they sailed thousands of miles during their careers and carried thousands of tons of cargoes safely from port to port. Their crews too were very small, consisting in the Northern Chief of the master, mate and second mate, cook, four able seamen and two boys.

The Alexander Craig, formerly Kathleen Hilda, barque, in which I sailed years ago in the intercolonial trade, was not a great deal larger. This vessel was built at Nova Scotia in 1891 and was 163 feet in length, 34 feet beam and 13 feet depth of hold. She was 520 registered tonnage. She was converted into a hulk in 1909, and like the brigantine Defiance, was finally beached on Brown’s Island, at the mouth of Auckland harbour and burnt. I remember once, some years ago, rambling round among the remains of some of these old hulks on the beach at Brown’s Island, when I stumbled across the remains of the old Kathleen Hilda. I nearly fell across an old main hatch beam on which was cut the official number of some ship. I made a note of it, and on arriving back home compared it with the official number of the Kathleen Hilda, afterwards Alexander Craig, on my discharge from that ship. Sure enough it was one of my old ships, but I had been away from Auckland for some years and did not know where she was finally disposed of until then.

One of the smallest barques trading to Auckland in the intercolonial trade in those days was the Manurewa, formerly the Vale Royal, built at Port Glasgow in 1884. I doubt whether the Manurewa was as big as the Northern Chief. She was posted missing on a voyage from Sydney to Grafton, N.S.W., in 1922. But the smallest barque of all trading in intercolonial waters in those days was, I think, the litde Natal Queen of Adelaide. I remember seeing her once in Newcastle lying alongside a big

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German barque on the farewell buoy. Her royal yards just about came level with the larger vessel’s lower topsail yards.

The Empreza was a small barque also of about 200 tons. The barquentine Senorita was another intercolonial trader built in Scotland and finishing up in New Zealand waters. She was built by Gumming and Ellis at Inverkeithing in 1893. Her dimensions were, length 144 feet, beam 27 feet, depth of hold x 1 feet, and she registered 350 tons. I remember loading with her in the Neptune barquentine at the Aratapu mills, Kaipara, when Mick Hill, afterwards Captain T. V. Hill of U.S.S. Niagara and Aorangi fame, was second mate of her. Mick was a wild lad in those days, and had served his time in the little intercolonial barque Royal Tar, wrecked afterwards on Shearer Rock outside Tiri Island in the Hauraki Gulf. From these little ships Captain Hill, and many others like him, rose to high command in the British Mercantile Marine, and have left names behind them which will long be remembered in the annals of our colonial shipping. Captain T. V. Hill died recently at Vancouver.

The old Antiope, iron barque, 1,380 tons, built away back in 1866, was another well known trader in New Zealand and Australian waters years ago. She also came originally from Scotland, being built by J. Reid and Company, Port Glasgow. She finished up by being gutted by fire in Lorenzo Marques, South Africa, and abandoned to the underwriters. All the after accommodation under the poop was destroyed, but the rest of the ship remained intact. She was sold for a hulk and towed to Chinde about 1922.

Another of the old intercolonial fleet to be destroyed by fire was the steel built barquentine Alexa, formerly Voorburg. This fine little vessel was built in Holland in 1904. She was 286 tons register, and at the time of her loss in February 1929, she was owned by Messrs On Chang and Company, Chinese merchants of Sydney. The Alexa was burnt at Butaritari in the Gilbert Islands. She was loading copra for Sydney at the time, and being half loaded the flames burnt so fiercely that there was no hope of saving the vessel. Messrs On Chang and Company previously owned the little barque Loongana, Hobart built. She was wrecked in the Gilbert group in 1912. An old shipmate of mine, who had served in the Loongana, told me that she was one

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of the best living sailing vessels he had ever been in. He said that her Chinese owners saw to it that the clause in the agreement “ Sufficient without waste ” was no illusion.

Whilst on the subject of fires at sea, I call to mind the fact that three of my old ships were lost, after I had left them, by fire at sea. These were the barquentine Southern Cross, built at Weymouth in England, ex-missionary vessel for the Melanesian Missionary Society, posted missing in September 1920, the barquentine Handa Isle, Auckland-built, posted missing in October 1919, and the Ysabel. The Southern Cross was a wooden vessel of 291 tons and the Handa Isle a wooden vessel of 261 tons. I will describe personal experiences in these ships later on.

In December 1890 the American ship Leading Wind, Captain Veale, arrived at Auckland from New York via Dunedin, and in January of the next year, 1891, she caught fire alongside the wharf and had to be towed out into the stream and scuttled. She was afterwards owned by Winstones Limited of Auckland, and Captain Savory was put in command of her. Years afterwards (1914) the Island-trading ketch Kereru, built by Lane and Brown of Whangaroa, had the same thing happen to her. She caught fire alongside the railway wharf at Auckland and was scuttled. She is still afloat as a small explosive hulk under the name of Rira, and is owned by the Nobel Explosive Company.

The little Auckland-built barquentine Ysabel (formerly Southern Cross), in which I sailed under Captain William Ross in the South Sea Island trade years ago, was also burnt at sea. She was finally sold to the French at Tahiti, and while sailing under that flag, took fire with a load of copra on board, and was totally destroyed. The small fore and aft schooner Gisborne met her end in a like manner under the same flag when she too went up to the Islands. I sailed in her as mate on her last voyage from Auckland to Papeete, Tahiti, where we handed her over to French owners towards the end of 1919.

I could not attempt to give a list of all the old sailing vessels which visited our ports during their careers as intercolonial traders in those far off days, but even an abridged list will convey to the interested reader some idea of their number and diversity of rig. And what a bizarre and colourful galaxy they make to

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be sure. Here cheek by jowl with such names as Day Dream, barque 355 tons of Adelaide, Heather Belle, barque 479 tons of Newcastle, we come across the unromantic barquentine Frank Guy, 19 1 tons of Auckland, and the barque G. M. Tucker, 487 tons of Dunedin. The Julia M. Avery, of Sydney, was a wooden brig of 127 tons, built in 1881 at Baltimore, U.S.A., and the Julia Percy was an iron barque of 428 tons, of Melbourne, built at Glasgow in 1876 and hulked in 1910. The Madura, a wooden barque of 344 tons, was built at Nantes, France in 1866. The Ocean Ranger was a wooden barquentine of 234 tons of Dunedin, built at Bridport in 1867. The barque Onyx was built of iron at Durham in 1864 and registered at Auckland. The Silver Cloud was a wooden barquentine of 292 tons and built at Sunderland in 1874 and registered at Auckland in 1888. She was hulked in 1909. The Waitemata was a wooden barquentine of 364 tons and owned by J. J. Craig of Auckland. She collided with the SS. Stella in Rangitoto Channel in the early 1900s and sank while inward bound to Auckland from Newcastle, coal laden. The St Kilda was an iron barquentine of 189 tons, built at Paisley, Scotland in 1868 and hulked in 1911. She ran for many years in the intercolonial trade, and in the early part of her career brought hundreds of miners across from Melbourne to the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand during the gold rush years. I made several voyages in this little vessel in the 1900s under Captain Longwill.

The Veritas was a wooden barque of 672 tons registered at Dunedin in 1899, built at Helsingborg in 1876 and hulked in 1926. The Woosung was a fine iron barque of 698 tons, built at Glasgow in 1863. In the year 1895 or 1896 the barques Woosung and West Australian were lying at Hapai in theFriendly Islands waiting to load copra cargoes. During the course of a hurricane, which struck the group at that time, the West Australian dragged her anchors and fouled the Woosung, stripping her of all her yards and top masts. Mr James Clare, shipwright and boatbuilder of Hapai, later of St Mary’s Bay, Auckland, bought the wrecked Woosung for a hundred pounds, and afterwards sold the hulk to Mr George Niccol of Auckland, who had her towed here and refitted for sea. She traded for years in the intercolonial trade and was finally broken up in 1926.

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The Neptune, wooden barquentine of 343 tons, was another vessel which was wrecked at the Islands and bought by Niccol of Auckland, who had her refitted for the intercolonial trade. She was lost on Kaipara Bar on May 14, 1905, when Captain R. M. Cliffe had command of her. There was another Neptune in New Zealand waters prior to the barquentine Neptune. This vessel was a brig of 299 tons registered at Dunedin. Brigs were a very common rig among the early intercolonial sailing vessels. There were the brigs Woodlark 258 tons of Dunedin, Drover 173 tons of Sydney, Hebe 214 tons of Sydney, Chieftain 290 tons of Sydney, and Fairy Rock 192 tons of Hobart. This old vessel was built at Rye in Sussex away back in 1859, and was still in commission during the early 1900s. Wild Wave was a very popular name with a lot of these little early sailing ships. There was a schooner Wild Wave lost in Pelorus Sound in June 1866, and another schooner called the Wild Wave lost at Chatham Islands in July 1866. A third schooner called the Wild Wave was lost on a passage from Lyttelton to Pelorus Sound in October 1883. In July 1881 a brig called Wild Wave went ashore at Kaipara and was condemned, and on May 8, 1890 another brig called Wild Wave stranded on Kaipara Bar, outward bound timber-laden for Sydney. She was also salvaged but condemned. There was also a barque Wild Wave, a wooden vessel of 223 tons, built in 1875 and registered at Adelaide. She was wrecked at Stanley, Tasmania in June 1923. The Thomas and Henry was a wooden brig hailing from Dunedin. She was 215 tons built in 1850 and broken up in 1926. There was also the brig Vision of Auckland and the brig Edward, a one-time whaler, as was also the barque Helen of Hobart. Both were visitors to Auckland in this calling as late as the early igoos.

Among the barques were the Elizabeth Graham, composite barque Mary Moore, composite barque Lumberman’s Lassie, barque Clan McLeod, barque Brunette, barque Vivid, barque Fernando, barque Conference, barque Ellen, barque Notero, barque Lurline, barque Ganymede, barque Killarney, and barque Rebecca, all intercolonial traders. Later on J. J. Craig’s fleet began to grow, and the barque Notero was, I think, one of the first of that grand fleet. In the shipping column of the New Zealand Herald we find this entry on November 22, 1892 ;

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“ Barque Motero overdue from Howland Island with guano. T. T. Arundel Agents. Wooden vessel of 430 tons, Campbell Master, J. J. Craig owner.” Then sailing under Craig’s flag came the barques Jessie Craig, formerly I sola, Hazel Craig ex-Quathlamba, Marjorie Craig ex-Hirotha, Louisa Craig exPeru, James Craig ex-Clan McLeod, Constance Craig exMargarita, all iron and steel barques, and Selwyn Craig exPrince John, ex-Advancement, iron barquentine. The fourmasted barque Falls of Garry also made some voyages under Craig’s flag in the intercolonial trade in the 1900s.

Other barques sailing intercolonial about this time were the Rona ex-Polly Woodside, Rothesay Bay, Wai-iti ex-Singe, Weathers field, Woosung, Laira, Casablanca, Dilpussund, Empreza, Aldebaran, Emerald, Alcestis, Concordia, Bankfields and Otago, in which Joseph Conrad sailed as master, Onyx, Wenona, and many more.

The large four-masted barque Rewa ex-Alice A. Leigh was one of the largest sailing vessels owned in New Zealand during the last days of our sailing ships. In fact I think she would be the largest of them all. This fine old vessel was built of steel at Whitehaven in 1889. She was 2,817 tons and her dimensions were 309 x46x 25 feet. She was laid up at Wellington in 1928, her owners at that time being the Scales Shipping Line of Wellington, and her port of registry was Wellington. Later on she was towed up to Auckland and was laid up there for many years. Finally, no work offering for her, and her steel hull beginning to go between wind and water for the need of chipping hammers and red lead, she was sold to Mr Charles Hansen, who owned a small island out in Hauraki Gulf. Mr Hansen bought the once fine old vessel for use as a breakwater at his anchorage at the island, and thither she was towed and beached in the early 19305, and there she lies at the time I write, the sorrowful picture of a once fine ship. She lies over on her port bilge, at an angle of over forty-five degrees, with what remains of her once fine array of orderly masts and yards hanging precariously at every conceivable angle out over the calm waters of the little bay. Her great steel spike bowsprit, massive and haughty, still points challengingly seawards above her splendid clipper bow. The incoming tides creep quietly up over her lee-te-gallant rail and slanting

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decks and then recede, leaving, as the years go by, an accumulation of sea growth such as is found on ships’ bottoms below the water line. One could close one’s eyes and visualize her in her hey-day beating to the westward off Cape Horn, laying down to a press of canvas in the hollow of those great seas at just such an angle as she now has, the roaring of her cleaving fore foot and the thrumming of the weather leaches of her taut and sodden canvas drowning all other sounds. Such a scene in fact as to cause one sea writer in Blue Peter to express himself thus: “Poetry to me is motion, and the rolling thunder, and the heaving wild commotion when the rail goes under.” And so ended the seagoing career of the fine four-masted barque Rewa ex- Alice A. Leigh.

The iron ship Dart ford, 1,194 tons, built at Sunderland in 1877, was one of the few old sailing vessels still afloat and doing duty in 1945 as a hulk. She, in company with the iron barque Gladbrook tx-County of Anglesea, and the old wooden ex-China Tea Clipper Jubilee, 741 tons, built at Cumberland in 1857, were serving in the humble capacity of coal hulks at Auckland.

Seated one evening on a ferry steamer some years ago, I viewed these three once fine old sea wanderers of the days of sail. In the blue haze of that summer evening they appeared as a phantasmal procession of old-time ships. In fancy I could picture them once again under all canvas, and all heeling over slightly on the port tack heading seawards once more. The light northerly wind which was then blowing would give them that slight list, which was in reality given to the whole three vessels by a larger amount of coal being discharged from the port side than the starboard. However, at the moment they seemed to me as if they had been rejuvenated once more, and before my eyes they were sailing out to sea again. The old Jubilee, being moored in the most easterly position down near Stanley Point, was in the lead as, being an ex-China Clipper, would have been her rightful position in reality. Next to her and not far astern went the County of Anglesea, a fast sailer in her day too I believe, and lastly followed the ship Dartford, all arrayed, or so it appeared to me in my day-dream, in all their sea regalia of lofty masts and yards and tall pyramids of sail. The ferry passed them by one by one, and viewing their listed hulls and

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dreaming of them under canvas once more, they were soon lost to view and my dreams faded away. All three are now beached and burnt to water’s edge on the outside of Rangitoto Island outside Auckland Harbour.

With the arrival at Auckland of the schooner Gazelle on September 21, 1853, from Adelaide bringing the first settlers for Waipu from Nova Scotia, the New Zealand seafaring fraternity was enriched by the addition of many shipowners, shipbuilders, and shipmasters who have left an indelible mark on our little island country’s marine history. The passengers who arrived by the Gazelle had sailed from Nova Scotia in the barques Margaret and the Highland Lass in 1851 for Adelaide under the leadership of the Rev. Norman McLeod. The third ship to leave Nova Scotia after the Margaret and Highland Lass was the brig Gertrude. This ship made the complete voyage direct to New Zealand, via Simons Bay, South Africa, and anchored in Auckland on December 22, 1856. Then came the brigantine Spray, which afterwards went into the intercolonial trade under the command of Captain H. F. Anderson, who in later years became one of Auckland’s leading ship-chandlers. The barque Breadalbane was another Nova Scotia ship which brought settlers for Waipu. She also went into the intercolonial trade after her voyage out. The barque Ellen Lewis, the last ship to bring passengers from Nova Scotia to New Zealand, also finished up as an intercolonial trader. The descendants of the men and women who came out in these ships have left a name as shipbuilders and seafarers which cannot be beaten. Numerous fine vessels were built by the settlers of Whangarei Heads, Waipu, Big Omaha, and Mahurangi. Like their forefathers in Nova Scotia, the Waipu settlers built fine ships and sailed them.

The schooner Three Cheers (not to be confused with a large Australian-built hold-scow of later years) was built by Captain Duncan Matheson of Omaha. She was one of the fastest vessels that has ever sailed in New Zealand waters. From many little harbours on the coast near Auckland were built such vessels as the brigantines Borealis and Linda Weber, and many well-known ketches and schooners, while larger vessels like the barques Novelty and Northern Chief and the barquentine Handa Isle came later on. In the ’sixties, ’seventies and ’eighties Auckland

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was certainly a port of small sailing ships. Captain D. H. McKenzie of Auckland at one time owned about sixty sailing vessels, all engaged in the foreign going, intercolonial, and coastal trade out of Auckland, and the majority of his vessels were commanded by Waipu men. Right up to the time of J. J. Craig’s and George Niccol’s fleets of sailing ships, as often as not the names of Matheson, McKenzie, Campbell, McLeod, McGregor, McDonald, Urquhart, Ferguson and many others of Nova Scotia origin appeared as masters. Shortly after the end of the First World War all these fine little vessels, barques and barquentines, were ousted by steamers, and the saw-mills of Kaipara and Hokianga Harbours saw them no more. One of my old schoolmasters, Mr N. R. McKenzie, has left a most interesting story of the Waipu settlers in his book The Gael Fares Forth.

A list of old intercolonial sailing vessels which were serving as hulks in Australian and New Zealand waters, compiled by Mr R. C. C. Dunn of Melbourne, appears in the December issue 1930 of Sea Breeze, and will let many an old sailor of sailing ships know where some of his old ships ended their days. The iron barque Peru cx-Raupo ex-Louisa Craig, 683 tons, built at Kinghorn, Fifeshire in 1876, was hulked at Wellington in 1923. This fine little vessel belonging originally to John Stewart's and Co. of London, was sold by them to J. J. Craig and was in the intercolonial trade for a number of years. Under Stewart's flag she traded between England and the West Coast of South America. In 1903 she was resold to Scales and Co., Wellington, and went into the Pacific Coast trade, in charge of Captain Kennedy, later master of the four-masted barque Rewa. She was a very fast sailer and made one voyage between San Francisco and Lyttelton in fifty-one days. After the 1914-18 war, she re-entered the intercolonial trade again. She was later on bought by the Canterbury S.S. Co. in 1922 and converted into a hulk. After serving for a number of years in this menial duty she was eventually towed out of Lyttelton and sunk in Starvation Bay near Lyttelton. The iron barquentine lima, 318 tons, built in 1885 was converted into a hulk in 1925. She served in that capacity up to February 11, 1937, when she was towed out into Cook Strait from Wellington and

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blown up and sunk between Cape Palliser and Pencarrow.

The River Boyne, an iron barquentine of 466 tons, built at Govan in 1867 was hulked at Melbourne in 1928. The iron barque Rona ex-Polly Woodside, 610 tons, was a well-known intercolonial trader. She was built at Belfast in 1885 and registered at Auckland in 1912. In 1926-7 her port of registry was Sydney and her owners then were the Adelaide S.S. Co., Ltd.

The iron barque Rothesay Bay ex-Active ex-Rothesay Bay, 762 tons, was one of the well-known sea writer Allan Villiers’ old ships. She was built at Dumbarton in 1877, and hulked at Auckland in 1921. She was finally broken up for scrap iron on the beach in front of the Maori village of Orakei in Auckland Harbour.

The iron barquentine Selwyn Craig ex-Prince John exAdvancement, 486 tons, was built at Glasgow in 1868. Her port of registry in 1905 was Auckland. She was one of J. J. Craig’s fine fleet. She served as a coal hulk at Auckland in her later days, and in 1925 was out of the Register and later broken up. The iron barque Shandon ex-Victor ex-Shandon, 1,330 tons, was built at Glasgow in 1883. Her port of registry in 1915 was Melbourne. She was hulked prior to the 1914—18 war and then re-rigged in 1917. She was finally hulked in 1922. The wooden barque Veritas, 672 tons, was built at Helsinborg in 1876. She was an old intercolonial trader and was hulked at Auckland in 1926. She has long since been broken up. The steel barque Wai-iti exSinge, 690 tons, was built at Arendal in 1891, and in 1906 was registered at Timaru. She was hulked at Lytdeton in 1914. This vessel, while lying empty in the Northern Wairoa river in 1906, caught her inside bilge on the steeply shelving bank near Dargaville, and as the tide fell she turned completely upside down, and lay there in the bed of the river for some time. She was eventually raised and re-entered the intercolonial trade.

The iron barque We at hers field, 1,047 tons > was built at Glasgow in 1865. She was an old New Zealand-London trader prior to entering the intercolonial trade in 1896. She was hulked at Wellington in 1908 and in 1909 she was taken to Suva, Fiji, and converted into a coal hulk there for the Union Steam Ship Company, Ltd. She had many vicissitudes during her long career, and at one time between 1888 and 1892 she lay stranded

wal- I t i The steel barque Wai-iti ex Singe, 690 tons, was built at Arendal in 1891. In 1906 she was registered at Timaru. New Zealand. The photo shows her capsized on the river bank neai Dargaville, Kaipara Harbour, owing to her bilge taking the bank as tide fell. She was hulked in 1908.

gaNv m e d e The Ganymede was an iron barque of about 600 tons. In the early 1900s she was owned at Timaru and was in the intercolonial trade. Captain George Schutze was second mate of her as a young man.

rothesay BAY The Rothesay Bay was an iron barque of about 600 tons. She was .111 intercolonial trader up to the end of the First World War. Allan Villiers, the --cm writer, made his first sea voyage in her.

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on the Otaki Beach, Cook Strait, for four years. Sir Henry Brett in his book White Wings gives a detailed account of the life of the Weathers field.

The wooden barque Wenona, 507 tons, was built at Nova Scotia in 1882. She ran for years in the intercolonial trade and was finally broken up in 1921. The iron barque Whitepine ex-// azel Craig ex-Quathlamba, was built at Aberdeen in 1879, and hulked at Melbourne in 1922. She was one of the best known vessels in J. J. Craig’s fleet, a smart natty looking little vessel, in which many New Zealand and Australian boys served their time. She was a fast sailer. The iron barque Ganymede was a handy little vessel of 569 tons register. She was built at Sunderland in 1868 and registered at Invercargill in 1893, her owners being John Mill and Co. She ran for a number of years in the intercolonial trade.

The old wooden barqu e-Killarny was another well-known intercolonial trader. She was owned at the last of her seagoing days by the Kauri Timber Co., Auckland, and was then under the command of Captain Hawkes. She ended her days as a hulk in Auckland Harbour and has long since been broken up. The iron barque Helen Denny was another vessel that became well known in the intercolonial trade in her later years. She was built by Robert Duncan of Glasgow, and under Captain William Ruthe, ran for years as one of the Shaw Savill fleet in the London-New Zealand trade. Subsequently she was bought by Captain F. Holm of Wellington who, after running her for a while in the intercolonial trade, handed her over to his son, who remained in command until she was sold to the Paparoa Coal Co. for a hulk in Wellington. Captain Holm, junr., was about the youngest master in the intercolonial trade when he took charge of the Helen Denny, being just 21 years of age. It is interesting to note that while under the Shaw Savill flag, with Captain Ruthe in command, the Helen Denny, outward bound from London to New Zealand, was in close proximity to H.M. Frigate Eurydice , when that fine vessel was capsized off Spithead on March 24, 1878, by a sudden fierce squall. The Eurydice at the time was in commission as a training ship for young seamen of the Royal Navy, and was returning from an exercising cruise to the West Indies and back. She

o

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sank with 328 men, only two being saved. Captain Ruthe finally settled in Auckland, buying an island off the eastern end of Waiheke Island, which for years afterwards was known as Ruthe’s Island but now again by its native name Pakatoa. Captain Ruthe died in Auckland in June, 1924, aged 82 years. The Helen Denny was finally broken up at Auckland in 1948, the bare hulk being towed out to sea and sunk.

The old composite barque DUpussund, a one time China Tea Clipper, finished her days in the intercolonial trade, and was finally hulked in Wellington. The old East Indiaman Edwin Fox holds the record for age as far as hulks go in New Zealand. She was built away back in 1854 in Calcutta and had a varied career. Up till a few years ago she was still in use at Picton as a freezing hulk and later as a coal hulk. The full life story of her is given by Sir Henry Brett in White Wings. The fine ex-clipper ship Samuel Piimsoll ended her days in West Australia as a hulk, after having been dismasted in September, 1902 off Cape Saunders, South Island, New Zealand whilst on a voyage from Glasgow to Dunedin and Auckland. The iron barque Laira, 464 tons, built in Sunderland in 1870 was another Shaw Savill vessel that ran in the England and New Zealand trade and afterwards finished up in the intercolonial trade. At one time she was owned by Stone Bros, of Auckland, but later on she passed into South Island owners' hands. In 1898, while lying alongside the wharf at Dunedin, she was run into by the steamer Wakatipu, and sank within six minutes. She was loaded with wool for London, and ready to sail at the time of this disaster, and was owned then by Captain Paterson. While in the intercolonial trade the Laira brought several cargoes of red building stone from Melbourne to Auckland for the building of the Ferry Buildings. She was hulked in Melbourne between 1926-7.

The little iron barque Alcestis, 400 tons, built at Sunderland in 1868, was a chartered ship under the New Zealand Shipping Company’s flag in her early days. Later she entered the intercolonial trade under the ownership of Stone Bros, of Auckland, and became very well known in the 1890s and early 1900s. She was buried in a reclamation in Otago Harbour.

The first mention in Auckland of the James Craig ex-Clan

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McLeod, later on to become so well known in the intercolonial trade, appears in the New Zealand Herald of November 3, 1890. It says that the barque Clan McLeod had arrived at Auckland on that date from New York loaded with “Yankee merchandise.” It also said that “ the Clan McLeod was a wholesome looking iron vessel of 640 tons, and though owned by W. R. Cameron of New York she nevertheless sails under the British flag.” She was purchased by J. J. Craig of Auckland some years after and renamed James Craig. Under Captain Campbell she became one of the best known of Craig’s fleet of sailers. Later on Captain William Nagle had charge of the James Craig and it was under his command that she was taken to Port Moresby, New Guinea and turned into a hulk there. After World War I the James Craig was bought by a Hobart firm and put back into seagoing order for the intercolonial trade again still as the James Craig. Her rejuvenescence did not last long however, for a few years afterwards she was sent to Hobart and converted into a hulk again. During her second period of sailing as an intercolonial trader the James Craig was under the command of Captain Murchison. Among her crew was Allan Villiers, the well-known sea writer, who later owned and sailed the little full-rigged ship Joseph Conrad around the world with a crew of boys.

Like the Hazel Craig ex-Quathlamba, a little Aberdeen-built clipper, the James Craig, built by Steel of Grennock, was also a fast sailer. She proved herself more than a match for the Louisa Craig ex-Peru, the little Kinghom-built barque, in a race across the Tasman Sea in 1907. My old friend and one-time shipmate in sail, Captain Len Robertson, was first mate of the James Craig on this occasion. He told me that the Louisa Craig under Captain Bob Kennedy and the James Craig under Captain Bill Nagle left Newcastle on the same day bound for Auckland, the James Craig crossing the bar two hours ahead of the Louisa. Both were loaded to their Plimsoll marks with coal but were in good sailing trim. Strong southerly winds were encountered all the way across the Tasman Sea, and aboard the James Craig the watch on deck were continually standing by the fore and main te-gallant halliards. Both ships made a fast run across from land to land and then had a hard slog down the coast of

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New Zealand from North Cape to Auckland. The James Craig made the passage in eight days and the Louisa in eight and a half days. On the passage across the Louisa Craig lost both te-gallant masts, but no damage was done aboard the James Craig. On anchoring, both vessels had a heavy list to port owing to their coal cargoes shifting on the run across the Tasman. After discharging her coal cargo at Auckland the James Craig sailed in ballast for Kaipara to load timber for Sydney. Soon after sailing the master, Captain Nagle, took ill and sent for Mr Robertson.

“Anchor under Whangaparaoa, Mister,” he said. “I don’t feel at all well but may be better in the morning.” During the night, however, he became worse and when daylight came Mr Robertson gave the order to call all hands to man the windlass. Setting all sail that the barque could carry, he ran back into port and signalled for the doctor, who on arrival aboard ordered the Captain straight to hospital. On going ashore and reporting to old Captain Campbell, J. J. Craig’s ship’s husband, the old skipper congratulated Mr Robertson for his prompt action in bringing his sick Captain back to port. He then said, “ Have you got your Master’s papers, Mr Robertson ? ”

“No sir, not yet,” replied the young mate.

“ That’s a pity,” replied Captain Campbell. “ I was going to send you back aboard as master.” Considering Mr Robertson was at that time just turned 22 years of age he was a bit young to take charge of a fair-sized barque like the James Craig, but men seemed to take on responsible positions early in life in those days.

The iron barque Casablanca, 547 tons, built in Liverpool in 1868, was converted into a hulk at Melbourne in 1912. She ran in New Zealand-Australian trade for a number of years. The iron barque Bankfields was another well-known intercolonial trader of the early 1900s. She was built in 1876 at Durham, England, and was 785 tons register. She was converted into a hulk in 1911. The iron barquentine Jerfalcon was a hulk in Melbourne in 1926-7. She was built in Glasgow in 1868 and served in the intercolonial and Island trades.

The well-known iron barque Jessie Craig e\-Isola, was a hulk in Melbourne in 1926-7. The iron barque Julia Percy, 428 tons,

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built in Glasgow in 1876, and later a well-known Australian trader, was hulked in Melbourne in 1910. Three of the famous Loch Line ships were hulked in Australian ports in the earlier 1900s, viz. the Loch Katrine, Sydney 1910, Loch Ness, Adelaide 1908, and Loch Lay, Adelaide 1909. The old iron barque Mary Moore, an intercolonial trader, was a hulk in Auckland in 192 6-7. The well-known little barque Otago, of which the famous writer Joseph Conrad was master at one period of his career, was doing duty as a hulk in Sydney in 1926—7 and later at Hobart. She was built in Glasgow in 1869 and her name will long be remembered owing to her association with one of our best sea writers.

The little iron barquentine Pendle Hill also finished up her days as a hulk in Sydney. The iron barquentine River Boyne, 466 tons, built at Govan in Scotland in 1867, was doing duty at the end of her days, 1926-7, as a hulk in Melbourne. The iron barque Shandon, 1,220 tons, was also converted into a hulk in 1922. She was built in Glasgow in 1883. The iron barque South Australian, 716 tons, built in Glasgow in 1876, was hulked in Melbourne in 1910.

It will be seen that notwithstanding the hazardous nature of their sea service, many of these fine vessels lived to a mature old age and then, after years of strenuous endeavour on the high seas in all sorts of weather, eventually were still fit to serve in the more humble but still essential service as coal hulks for years after their seagoing days had ended. Ships, unlike men, are not pensioned off in their old age to live lives of useless inactivity, for most of them died in harness.

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Chapter 11

The Sea’s Toll

Whenwc peruse the list of sailing vessels in the intercolonial and South Sea trade that were either totally wrecked or posted as missing, from the earliest traders of the 1850s down to the last sailing vessels engaged in the intercolonial trade, we are struck by the fact that there were about as many sailing ships lost in the early 1900s as there were in the 1860s. The risks of total loss at sea by foundering, or being wrecked on such dangerous entrances as the Kaipara, or Hokianga Harbours, were just as great for the later vessels in this fleet as for the earlier, in spite of the fact that lighthouses and tugboats were more plentiful in the later years. Sailing ships still took the same risks when bad weather was encountered, or when running in over dangerous bars like the Kaipara. Full powered steam vessels, which finally drove them from off the face of the seas, were often independent of wind or weather, and they had no need to wait for days for a favourable slant of wind, or stand to sea for fear of being driven on to a lee shore.

Back in 1863 the barque Acacia 218 tons, Captain Hillman, was wrecked on the Hokianga Bar on July 29 of that year, though the crew were saved. Previous to this disaster the barque Helena 265 tons of Sydney was driven ashore a little south of Kaipara Bar on September 20, 1853. She became a total wreck with the loss of seven men out of her crew of eleven. This vessel was bound to New Zealand from Melbourne, and made the coast in exceptionally bad weather and had to claw off and on for eleven days. Eventually she was driven ashore and lost.

The barque Posthumus 500 tons, also from Melbourne to Kaipara, was lost in about the same position a day later, only in this case all hands got safely ashore. On January 14, 1870 the barque Laughing Water 41 1 tons, bound from Newcastle, N.S.W. to Otago Harbour, was driven ashore after striking a sunken rock near Riverton, and was totally lost, but again all hands were saved. The barque Foronia was lost on Kaipara Bar

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on May 16, 1877. She was proceeding to Kaipara in ballast to load timber at Aratapu Mills for Melbourne when her loss occurred. The Foronia was a wooden vessel of 329 tons register and commanded by Captain Mitchelson.

On March 29, 1882 the barque Vindex 290 tons register became a total wreck when she grounded in the channel while leaving Kaipara for Australia timber laden. Some time during the month of April 1883 the brigantine Adieu foundered in mid ocean with the loss of all hands. She was a wooden vessel built in N.S.VV. in 1870 and 174 tons register. On November 19, 1883 the barque India was lost on Hokianga Bar while she was outward bound timber laden for Rockhampton. She was a vessel of 202 tons and was owned by Mr T. Henderson of Auckland. Captain McKenzie was in command. During the month of January 1884 the brigantine Mary King, bound from Lyttelton to Townsville, foundered in mid ocean with the loss of all hands, six in number, and four passengers. Some time in May, 1887 the wooden barque Celestia 225 tons, formerly a whaler, foundered on the passage from the Bay of Islands to Hobart with the loss of all hands. The barque Sophia R. Luhrs, owned by the Union Steam Ship Company, Captain L. A. Marks, a wooden vessel of 661 tons, built at Maine, U.S.A. in 1874, became a total wreck on the North Spit, Kaipara, on June 3, 1888. She had anchored in the channel, but had dragged and went ashore on what is known as the ‘ Graveyard.’

On February 7, 1890 the one-time old whaling barque Splendid 358 tons, built at Massachusetts, U.S.A. in 1855, took the ground inside Kaipara while proceeding seawards timber laden, and became so badly strained that her cargo of timber had to be discharged, and the vessel condemned and broken up. This old vessel is supposed to have been the original of the Cachalot, about which Frank Bullen wrote so interestingly in his well known book The Cruise of the Cachalot.

‘ Lonehander,’ a member of the old whaling family of the name of Cook of North Auckland, who wrote a number of articles to the New Zealand Herald some years ago under the above nom-de-plume, also sailed in the old barque Splendid when she was a whaler. On June 14, 1890 the barque Kentish Lass left Hokianga, timber laden for Sydney, and was posted

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missing. She was a teak wood built vessel of 362 tons built at Bridport in 1872. Captain J. Johnstone was in charge and with him were lost nine men. Years afterwards the hull of the Kentish Lass was found by an Australian warship at the Solomon Islands. The wooden barquentine Grecian Bend 225 tons, built at Birkenhead, England, in 1879, foundered at sea while on a voyage from Clarence River, N.S.W. to Port Chalmers in March 1894.

The wooden brigantine Elizabeth Price became a total loss in 1898 on Mahia Peninsula through her anchors dragging. She and the brigantine Aratapu had run for shelter under Wangawai Roads in a howling south-east gale, and the wind veering to the north-east, had put both vessels on the lee shore. The Elizabeth Price dragged both her anchors, and piled up ashore, becoming a total wreck. She was on her way from Brisbane to Dunedin with a cargo of scrap iron at the time of her loss. The smartsailing brigantine Aratapu, built by Barbour of Aratapu, Kaipara, set sail, and slipping her anchors, beat out against the howling gale and high seas, and weathering the land, ran for Wellington, whither she was bound from Tairua, near Mercury Bay, with a cargo of sawn timber. During the punching to windward against the heavy seas, the Aratapu’s timber cargo below worked clear of the wedges under the deck beams, and shot forward through the forrard bulkheads into the crew’s fo’c’sle, rendering their place of abode quite useless for the remainder of the voyage. On this occasion Captain Gilmore was in command of the Aratapu and he had with him as first mate Mr, afterwards Captain, George Schutze of Melbourne, who later on commanded the barquentines Neptune, lima, and Mary Isabel, and the barque Manunui, and with whom the writer sailed in some of these vessels. The wooden barquentine Neptune 684 tons, owned by Mr George Niccol of Auckland, and in charge of Captain R. M. Cliffe, was totally wrecked on the North Spit, Kaipara Harbour on May 14, 1905. All hands got safely ashore. The Neptune was built at Dundee in 1872, and prior to being brought to Auckland from the South Sea Islands where she had stranded, had sailed for years under the Norwegian flag. I sailed in this vessel under Captain Schutze, and later on will give an account of an intercolonial voyage in her.

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The barque Emerald, a wooden built vessel, ran ashore in thick and dirty weather some miles north of Kaipara Harbour on June 15, 1905. She was coal laden from Newcastle to New Zealand and had made the land in very dirty weather from the westward. Captain Bushell and his crew got safely ashore. The Emerald became a total wreck. On October 20, 1905 the barque County of Ayr 499 tons, Captain W. Tullock, was totally wrecked on Danger Reef, South Island, on a voyage from Port Chalmers to Lyttelton. The barquentine River Hunter was totally lost on Whangape Bar, north of Hokianga, on April 29, 1906. She was being towed in over the bar by the small steamer Ohinemuri, when a huge sea hit the tug, carrying away her steering gear. Thereupon both vessels became unmanageable in the big seas pounding in on the bar. The tug managed to work safely in through the narrow entrance, but the barquentine piled up on a ledge of rocks in the fairway and became a total wreck. The River Hunter was built at Grangemouth at the head of the Firth of Forth in Scotland in 1892. She was an iron vessel of 315 tons register. Captain R. A. Campbell was in charge at the time of her loss. The wooden barquentine Elverland 361 tons, Captain Savory, foundered off the Three Kings Islands on December 29, 1906. The vessel was coal laden from Newcastle, N.S.W. to Auckland, and had opened up and was leaking through previous bad weather. She was built at Porsgrund in Norway in 1895.

On July 14, 1907 the iron barque Woollahra 974 tons, Captain Anderson, was totally wrecked by going ashore near Cape Terawhiti while on a voyage from Wellington to Kaipara, at which port she was to have loaded timber for Sydney. The Woollahra was built at Sunderland in 1875. In the following month of the same year as the Woollahra was lost, the barque Constance Craig ex.-Margarita, was lost with all hands while on a voyage from Gisborne to Hokianga. The Constance Craig was an iron barque of 494 tons register and also built at Sunderland in the year 1873. Captain Morrison, a native of Orkney Islands, was in command at the time of her loss, and with him were a crew of eleven. The ship Loch Lomond, which had just been purchased by the Union Steamship Company for use as a training ship, was posted missing about September 16, 1908

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while on a voyage from Newcastle, N.S.W. to Lyttelton. Captain Thompson was in command, and had with him a crew of nineteen. All hands were lost. About January 6, 1909 the brigantine Rio Loge was lost at sea while on a voyage from Kaipara to Dunedin. The Rio Loge was a wooden vessel of 241 tons and Captain Spence was in charge. On November 27, 1910 the wooden barque Hippolas, Captain Norris, struck Walker’s Rock, near the Brothers Light in Cook Strait. In a badly leaking condition she was taken in tow by the steamer Takapuna, bound for Picton, but before the steamer could get the barque in close enough to beach her, the Hippolas sank in thirty-five fathoms of water. All hands were saved on this occasion.

The wooden barquentine Pelotas became a total wreck at Wanganui on June 12, 19 11. She was on her way from Eden, N.S.W. with a cargo of hardwood sleepers and was towing in over the bar at the time against a heavy fresh in the river. The Pelotas was a vessel of 25 1 tons register and built at Christiansand in 1897.

On August 7, 1914 the iron barque Joseph Craig ex-Dunblane was lost on Hokianga Bar through her tow-rope parting. The Joseph Craig was outward bound, timber-laden for Melbourne at the time of her loss. She was a vessel of 714 tons, built at Glasgow in 1878. Captain Geoffrey W. Airey was in command, and he had with him as chief officer Mr W. E. Sanders, who was later on to become so well known as Lieut-Commander Sanders, V.C., D.5.0., R.N.R., of the mystery ship Prize fame, during the war of 1914—18.

One of the last of the old intercolonial fleet to go was the old iron barque Antiope, which as I have said before, caught fire in Delagoa Bay, South Africa on December 13, 1921. Other intercolonial vessels that were lost by fire at sea were three of my old ships, the barquentines Handa Isle, Southern Cross, and the little Isabel. I have made mention of them in a previous chapter.

The iron barquentine Mary Isabel was another well known intercolonial vessel that went missing with all hands in the early igoos while on a voyage from New Zealand to Australia timber laden. Captain Cooper was in command at the time of her loss. The iron barquentine La Bella had a tragic ending when she was totally wrecked at Warranbool, Victoria in 1907. Several of

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her crew were drowned, and those that did reach the shore in safety had a miraculous escape from death in the high sea that was running. The La Bella was a beautiful little barquentine with a very pretty clipper bow and figurehead and a long riggedout jibboom.

The barque Manunui went ashore on Surprise Island lat. iB° 29 S. long. 163° 07 E. in 1917 and became a total loss. Captain W. Robertson was in charge and was one of the best known masters in the intercolonial trade. His two sons followed their father’s profession. Captain W. Robertson junr. died a few years ago after having commanded many vessels both steam and sail. Captain Leonard Robertson was, at the time of writing this, the Government Marine Superintendent at Wellington—now retired. He was second officer of the barquentine La Bella when that vessel was lost at Warranbool.

And so they passed on, these fine little vessels that served our island country so long and faithfully in the years gone by, passed on with many a tale of high adventure and sea daring that will never be told, for in most cases when they were lost their logbooks were lost with them. Very few, even the last of them, are held in living memory, for the men who sailed them are ageing fast, and what few are left will soon be setting forth on the long last voyage of all, towards that Valhalla of the souls of all those old sea warriors of the days of sail.

Chapter 12

The Barquentine “Neptune”

Th e barquentine Neptune was a sturdily built wooden vessel of 343 registered tonnage and 684 tons gross, built of oak at Dundee in the year 1872. On the fore she carried foresail, forelower topsail and upper topsail, te-gallant sail and royal. She had three headsails, that is fore-topmast staysail, inner and outer jibs, and on the main a fore and aft mainsail and main gaff topsail, while the mizzen carried only the one sail, a boom and gaff mizzen. On deck she had a raised fo’c’sle head, abaft of which was a large deck-house in which the crew lived, and the after end of which was the cook’s galley; aft she had a raised poop beneath which were the quarters for the afterguard, i.e. captain, mate, second mate and cook and steward. At the time I joined her in 1902 she would have been twenty-eight years old and had seen strenuous service in various parts of the world and under various flags. Prior to coming to Auckland she had been under the Norwegian flag, and was sold, while stranded on one of the many reefs of the South Seas, to Mr George Niccol of Auckland. Her compass card was still the same one that she had under the Norwegians with O for east instead of our customary E. She did not, however, carry the usual Norwegian coat-of-arms, i.e. the windmill pump at the break of her poop, but her pumps were there nevertheless, and in good working order too, judging by the brightness and smoothness of her pump handles.

Captain George Schutze, who had been first mate of the Ysabel, was master of the Neptune when I joined, and an elderly man named Stansfield was first mate, with a young Aucklander second. An elderly cook, four able seamen and two ordinary seamen completed the barquentine’s personnel. While lying alongside the old wooden Hobson Street Wharf, which was situated where the present day Princes Wharf now stands, we took in ballast for Kaipara whither we were bound to load sawn timber for Sydney. The ballast consisted of scores of dray

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loads of sticky clay from some foundation excavations going on in the rapidly growing city. A messy job it was too, trimming it with long handled shovels down in the hold. Then the mate would call out, “That’ll do boys, come up for dinner.” Up we would come looking more like a crowd of navvies than sailors, covered in yellow clay from head to foot. Right glad we were when the last dray load was tipped aboard and we were able to wash the decks down, and clean things up generally. The old barquentine did not look so bad when she was finally battened down and prepared for sea once more.

The wind blew strong out of the sou-west the morning we were ready to sail and disdaining the help of a tug, all sail was set alongside the wharf, and off down the harbour we went with a bone in our teeth that would have done credit to a fast liner. All that day we romped along, passing out through Tiri Passage and round Kawau Island in fine style, leading a fleet of coasting scows, ketches and schooners. As night came on we were off Cape Brett, and here the wind headed us and during the night came down from the WNW. in ever increasing squalls. The old ship, being light in ballast, bucked and jumped into the high head sea, and at eight bells, eight o’clock, the order came to shorten sail. It was a job for all hands to furl the foresail, and it took us fully an hour or more to secure that thrashing, ballooning sail. An old Norwegian sailor next to me on the yard was loud in his exhortations to “muzzle her boys, roll her op on to da yard, now den, op mit her I tell you.” We fought and struggled, slipping first one way and then another on the footropes as the ship plunged to windward and then rolled to leeward, but in the end we managed to pass the gaskets round it and finally subdue it. The lighter sails were more easily handled, and on reaching the deck the mate’s watch were ordered below.

“All right, relieve the wheel and go below the watch,” said the mate, and after losing nearly two hours of our precious watch below we rolled into our bunks to sleep until midnight. Against head winds and stormy seas we battled on for several days, until we reached the vicinity of the Three Kings group of islands and here the wind headed us again.

With a head wind none of these old square riggers could make much progress when in ballast trim, in fact most of them were

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nearly as bad at beating to windward empty as a flat-bottomed scow with her centre board hove right up. The only thing that could be said in favour of the wooden-built vessels when they were light was that the pump drill was not so long and frequent. Finally, after a passage of about twenty-eight days we made Kaipara Bar, and were picked up by the tug-boat Stirling and towed up to Aratapu, our loading port. Here at the busy sawmill wharf we moored the Neptune and commenced discharging our ballast, preparatory to loading our cargo of sawn timber for Sydney. Aratapu at that time was one of the largest shipping centres on the Northern Wairoa River, and while we were there several other vessels, intercolonial and coasting, were also loading timber. A little farther down the river, at Te Kopuru, a deep water barque was loading timber for London, and above us, up-river towards the port of Dargaville, another of our intercolonial ships was loading for Sydney.

It was the custom in those days for the crews of each vessel to stow their own timber cargoes, and generally speaking we thoroughly enjoyed the job, for to be down in the long clear hold handling the sweet-smelling kauri timber was an ideal occupation for most of the young fellows who formed the crews of these old-time windjammers. Especially was this so when the motive of competition became apparent, and the mate’s watch stowing the port side of the hold would endeavour to make a better stowed side than the second mate’s crowd stowing the starboard side.

The timber was sent aboard in slings from the small timber trucks on the wharves, and an ordinary seaman, driving the ship’s steam winch, would hoist away and lower each sling down into the hold, and so eager were the contesting watches that often an argument would crop up as to which side the sling of timber should go. If by any chance the mate’s watch could excel the second mate’s watch as timber Stowers to any great extent, or vice versa, the ship would soon take on a pronounced list to whichever side was stowing the greater number of slings. This would cause the wing tiers, or tiers of timber nearest to the ship’s side on the other side to come tumbling down and thereby creating a lot of unnecessary work in putting them up again. So we always tried to work it that the slings of timber went to each

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side alternately and thereby kept the ship on an even keel as the loading progressed. Yet as far as monetary reward went, in contrast to present day conditions they were practically negligible, for an able seaman on those ships then only received the small sum of £4 1 os. per month. In fact the master, holding a foreigngoing master's certificate, would often receive no more than £ 16 per month, while the first mate came a bad second with probably £8 or £ 1 o per month, and the poor second mate was lucky to pick up £6. The men who sailed solely on the New Zealand coast fared a little better for they were always two or three pounds a month better off than their fellow seamen of the intercolonial ships. Yet in an Auckland paper dated August 26, 1890, I read that the Coastal Vessels Owners' Association had met to consider the demands made by the seamen for £6 per month as wages. The demand was considered excessive, and a deputation from the owners was formed to negotiate with the seamen. However, while the intercolonial sailing ships ran they always found crews to man them even though the wages were small, and the life hard. One is inclined nowadays to ask why, but I for one am unable to answer this question. Unless it was the intangible lure that all sailing ships possessed for many of the youth of our race ; that "clear call that may not be denied" which our poet laureate writes of when he hungered for the "sea's edge, the limits of the land." Speaking for myself, all I can say in extenuation for the years of my life which I wasted in knocking around in sailing ships, is that in no other walk of life have I experienced the deep exultation that has thrilled me as it did when I have stood at the wheel of a fine old barque and let her romp along with her lee scuppers awash and watched her straining canvas, rounded and hard to the press of the wind. Or again, when I have paced the slanting deck with a favourite shipmate, as the old ship tore along in the night watches, and watched the stately swing of the towering sails as they pressed her over till the long swell came brimming up over the lee te-gallant rail.

The Neptune had completed her loading within a fortnight and in company with the barque Wild Wave was now lying at anchor inside the Kaipara Heads awaiting a favourable opportunity to cross outwards over the bar. Our deck-load, which

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reached to the top of the bulwarks, was lashed down with chain lashings, and everything made secure and ready for sea. At irregular intervals other vessels came down the river, until a little fleet of half a dozen or more lay at anchor awaiting the signal from the Pilot Station at Pouto Point that the bar was workable. They comprised a couple more barquentines, another barque and two or three large timber scows. Ship visiting became the rage and on several occasions we of the Neptune visited our nearer neighbours for a friendly chat after tea. Great old yarns were often spun between the men of the different ships at anchor, and as many of them were Scandinavians, we heard all sorts of tales of old sea lore and strange voyages.

“ Don’t make it too hot, Dutchy,” said a young colonial seaman who was one of the crew of the barque we were visiting.

“So,” replied Dutchy, “jous not belief aye? Veil, ven jous vos haf travelled de vorld around as mooch so me, jou vill pe able to talk, is it nod ? ”

What with sailorizing jobs aboard our respective ships while we lay at anchor, and visiting other ships, and being visited ourselves of an evening, the time soon flew by, until at last the much looked for signal was hoisted one fine morning at the Pilot station. “Bar Workable” it read, and we of the Neptune’s crew jumped to the mate’s order of “ Man the windlass and stand by the tug-boat lines.” That afternoon we were tearing along on the port tack with the yards just off the backstays. The barque Wild Wave was leading us by a couple of miles and close astern came the little barque Otago, Joseph Conrad’s old ship. What memories his name calls to mind, as one looks back over the years and considers his writings. Never will I forget his Mirror of the Sea, Youth and The Nigger of the Narcissus. It would have come as a surprise to many shore-going people in those days could they have heard some of the arguments carried on in some of those old sailing ships fo’c’sles. I have heard books like Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason and Darwin’s Origin of Species subjected to the most severe criticism by some of those old-time sailing ship sailors. I never came across a downright atheist among them either, though both Paine and Darwin were far from being that in my humble opinion.

That night, as the elusive loom of the fast receding land

ii L'i a The Kaipara-built schooner Huia, 198 tons register, was one of the fastest vessels in the intercolonial trade. In hi> book The Log of the Huia, C. W. Hawkins gives a good account of this fine little vessel, with beautiful illustrations.

WILL WATCH AN D ALBATROSS Will Watch and Albatross, two of Auckland's i ketches, competing at one of Auckland Anniversary Regattas. The Will Watch was built in Australia and the Albatross at Auckland. Will Watch served under the Americans in the last World War among the South Sea Islands. Albatr' lost on tli e New Zealand coast.

SOUTHERN CROSS The second Southern < lost m H.i" Strait.

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disappeared under a rising moon, I took a two hour trick at the old barquentine’s wheel and let her romp along, laying her course west-by-south. High aloft, the rising wind whistled and boomed through the vague hollows of her straining canvas. Forrard the bluff bows shouldered their way irresistibly through the rising rugged seas, flinging off showers of spray and sea spume which alternately glistened and shone with a nebulous sheen in the bright moonlight as the bows rose and fell. Under the lee bow was a continuous smother of yeasty foam which swept aft in a never ending stream and became merged in the trailing wake, stretching away astern like a white road over the heaving sea’s face.

And so the good ship proceeded on her way towards Sydney. The deep-water type of watch keeping, four hours on four hours off, broken by the two dog watches every evening, was the routine aboard these intercolonial traders. During our watches below we always tried to get as much sleep as possible, as when the cry of “ All hands on deck and shorten sail ” came, we would often lose an hour or two of our precious watch below. There was always plenty to do around the decks and aloft during the watches on deck, such as tending sails, and in the day watches, repairing and setting up rigging with occasional sail-making jobs and the like, and then in the old Neptune there was always the pump drill. Every two hours both day and night we would go to the pumps and endeavour to pump the bilges dry. During bad weather, when the old drogher was battling through high seas and hard gales, we could never pump her absolutely dry. If we got what we called a ‘ rolling suck ’ from the pumps then we would consider ourselves very lucky. One old mate we had who had sailed for years across the Western Ocean in the lumber trade called these ‘ rolling sucks ’ ‘ Quebecers.’ He told me that many of the old erstwhile wooden Yankee and Nova Scotia clipper ships had finished their days in the Quebec to London timber trade, and that some of them when loaded were always half full of water, and the only time the pumps ever sucked was when they were rolling heavy. The famous old flier Marco Polo ended her days in the Quebec lumber trade.

And so from the wheel to the pumps, and from the pumps to the wheel, we battled across the stormy Tasman Sea in the

H

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old Neptune. During the day watches conditions did not seem so bad. The deck load of sawn timber did not give us the same even footing as the clear run of the decks, and the pumps, being down in a hole in the deck load, were constantly under water in heavy weather.

One dirty night the port watch had just taken over the pumps from the second mate and two of his men, with the water gushing merrily up from below in response to our vigorous efforts, when the mate called out “ Hang on, boys, here comes a real Cape Homer on top of us.”

Glancing up over the dcckload we saw it coming, a menacing monstrosity of rising water towering high above our devoted craft. It broke with a thunderous roar as it hit the weather side of the ship, causing her to shudder from stem to stem and burying us down at the pumps in a smother of yeasty foam which surged around and over us with the rolling of the ship until we felt that our very lungs would burst.

“ Keep your weather eyes lifting,” said the mate. “We may get another one or two like that in succession.” But fortunately no other big seas came along and we were able to continue pumping until after about half an hour’s hard work we were overjoyed to get a ‘ Quebecer.’ Wc gave it up after an hour’s pumping and even then all we got was an occasional ‘rolling suck.’

Of course when the weather moderated and the sea went down we were always able to pump the old hooker dry, which was just as well, as it had often happened that some of these old wooden timber droghers had foundered in mid-ocean during continual bad weather and high seas, like the brigantine Adieu in 1883, and the old barque Celestia in 1887, the wooden barquentine Grecian Bend in 1894 and the wooden barquentine Elverland in 1906. As it happened, the old Neptune was not lost in this manner, although it would not have surprised any of her old hands had she done so. On this particular voyage she made a fairly good passage to Sydney and then loaded coal at Newcastle for Auckland, making the round trip in about three months. On another occasion we loaded sawn timber in the Neptune for Adelaide and made the passage from the Firth of Thames to Port Adelaide in under three weeks via Bass Straits.

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This passage was made in mid-winter with continual westerly gales following one upon the other to retard us. One stormy moonlight night during this voyage we saw a particularly fine lunar rainbow, and sailing under its spectacular arch to windward of us was a splendid four-masted barque under all plain sail. It was one of the most beautiful sights that I have ever witnessed at sea. The full moon riding high in the heavens, silver and scintillating, with the never ending procession of dark clouds mounting upwards and turning white as they raced across the moon’s face, and the two lonely ships battling across that stormy stretch of sea and passing each other under the arch of that wonderful lunar rainbow.

Port Adelaide was, in those days, like Sydney and Newcastle, largely a port of sailing ships, and here we saw some of the fine old colonial clippers that traded to England. The “Port Admiral ” and the “ Lass-O-Gowrie ” were two much frequented waterside public houses known to visiting sailormen to the port then, and even as late as the time of which I write it was not unusual for a man to be shanghaied out of Port Adelaide, although it did not have the reputation in this respect that Newcastle had. We towed round to Edithburg to load salt for Wellington on discharge of our timber cargo, and while loading there we thoroughly enjoyed the hospitality this little place offered. I think the owner of the salt cargo must have been a bom optimist to have entrusted such a cargo to the old Neptune. If he could have seen the water swirling around in her hold during bad weather while loaded with timber or coal I hardly think that he would have sent his salt to Wellington by the Neptune. But there you are, as she lay alongside the wharf at Edithburg she looked to all intents and purposes as staunch and tight as any iron or steel vessel, and so we loaded her with a full cargo of salt, stowed on heaps of old timber for dunnage in the bottom of her hold. Never will I forget the passage of thirty-five days to Wellington, beset by head winds and fog for the best part of the voyage. We floundered along from day to day with main decks awash, and often full from rail to rail when half the Southern Ocean would come pouring in over our weather rail. The pumps were rarely seen without two or three oilskin-clad figures toiling away at them and a large stream of clear briny

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water gushing out across the deck. We made Cook Strait in the vicinity of Cape Farewell and had the good luck to experience fine weather in this notorious stretch of water. On discharge of our salt cargo, less the amount we had pumped out with the bilge water on the passage across, we were sent round to Kaipara to load timber again for Australia.

We put in a wild night the first night out from Wellington, meeting a roaring south-easter as soon as we had cleared the harbour. Being in ballast trim the old ship bucked and jumped to such an extent that we were nearly thrown off the yards as we fought and struggled aloft to shorten sail. However, it was a fair wind for Kaipara and before its boisterous energy we simply flew along on our course. As we sailed in through the South Channel of the Kaipara Harbour a couple of days later, one of the men coming down from aloft on the fore after furling sail, called out to the mate on deck to come aloft and have a look at the head of the foremast as he thought it was sprung. And sure enough it was, as the mate soon discovered. Just below the futtock band under the fore-top a distinct break could be seen half-way round the mast. Luckily we were inside the bar when it was discovered, and running up to the anchorage off Pouto Point we let go the anchor and awaited the arrival of a tug to take us up river. During the long tow up to Tangowahine at the head of the Northern Wairoa River, where we were to load, we sent down all the sails on the fore, as we knew there would be a remasting job ahead of us before w r e could proceed to sea again. As the loading went on with shore labour stowing our cargo, the Neptune’s crew, under the direction of our first mate, set to work to send down the yards and te-gallant mast and topmast on the fore. Then it came to lifting out our old foremast, so sheer-legs were raised, the fore yard and lower topsail yard being utilized for this purpose. Lashed together with chain lashings at the head they served the purpose well and with a heavy purchase tackle rove off and the hauling part taken along to the fo’c’sle head capstan through a lead block on the deck we were ready, once the lower rigging and fore-top were lifted clear and lowered down, to heave out the fore-lower mast. All went well until we were lowering it away in a horizontal position on deck, when the head of it

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carried away at the break and crashed down on to the deck. Luckily it did not have far to fall and did no harm. As we stood around surveying the break, an old salt gruffly remarked, “By the Holy Sailor, there was not much between us and a dismasted hulk at sea with a rotten old stick like that in the old waggon.”

And these were the sentiments of us all; there was not much between fair sailing and disaster at sea in the days of sailing ships at that time. But what did we care? The majority of us were young and eager for adventure and experience, and here was a chance to assist in that interesting feat of seamanship, putting in a new fore-lower mast and re-rigging a square-rigged ship on the fore. When the new mast was completed on the wharf it was slung in the same way as the old one, swinging in an up and down position between the sheer legs.

“ Go below and enter the step of the mast as we lower away,” said the mate to a couple of our men and one of the shipwrights. Once we had the mast in a dead up and down position over the hole in the deckhouse we commenced lowering slowly away.

“How’s she coming down below there?” called the mate to the men below, who were standing by with crowbars ready to guide the step into its slot in the kelson.

“Keep on lowering, sir,” they called back. Suddenly there was a wild yell from below. “ Hold her! Vast lowering! ” they cried.

“ What the devil’s the matter with ye? ” cried the mate, going to the hatch coaming and peering down into the hold.

“ Sling us one of this year’s coins down, mister, a new penny’ll do, to put in the hole under the step of the mast,” someone called back.

“Ach, me lads, it’s not forgetting the old customs of the sea ye are to be sure; slip off, boy, to my room and fetch me a couple o’ coins wi’ this year’s date on ’em.” The boy was back in a moment with the required coins.

“ Here ye are, me lads, and may the devil fly away wid ye if this old hooker doesn’t have a new lease of life after we get this new stick into her.” His prognostications failed to materialize, however, for a couple of years later the old Neptune became a total wreck on the Kaipara Bar. On this occasion, however,

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we had the satisfaction and experience of re-masting her, and right well did we appreciate and enjoy our task. It was not always the luck of young seamen even in those days to have the opportunity of putting a lower mast in. Nowadays the art of rigging square rigged ships has passed away and never will return, I fear. As for myself I look back upon it as an experience well worth having, and many a time I mentally conjure up that scene of years ago; the old wooden barquentine, lying alongside a bush sawmill wharf, and the re-rigging operations being carried out in a seamanlike manner, with the mate leaning over the poop rail smoking his pipe at the end of the long day’s work and gazing lovingly at the result of the work being carried out under his skilled direction; lower mast, topmast, te-gallant mast and yards all going back into their proper positions. And not only did the old mate take a pride in the job being carried out, but we younger members of the crew could now put more of an old sailor’s roll into our walk, and take pride in the fact that we had taken part in the re-masting of a ship. As I mentioned before, the old Neptune left her bones on the Graveyard, North Spit, Kaipara Harbour a couple of years after I had left her. Captain Robert Cliffe was in charge of her at the time, and she went ashore in thick, dirty weather while crossing the bar inward bound. Captain Cliffe started a navigation school in Auckland some years after the loss of the Neptune, and was well known to the Auckland seafaring fraternity up to the time of his death a few years ago. He put many a young man through for his tickets in those days and was held in high esteem by all who knew him.

Captain George Schutze who had command of the Neptune while I was in her was another shipmaster who helped many a young fellow to reach the top in his profession. He always held navigation classes aft in the saloon and gave many a lad an upward start in his seafaring career. Captain Schutze believed in Auckland-owned ships being manned by Aucklanders or New Zealanders if he could get them, and in three different vessels in which I sailed with him he always adhered to this rule. Some of the happiest days of my sea life were spent in the barquentines Neptune, lima and Isabel, under Captain George Schutze. Such were the men who helped to build up the British Colonial Mercantile Marine’s personnel.

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Since this was written Captain Schutze has died at his home in Melbourne, and Captain Robert Cliffe has also passed on. In fact all of those fine old shipmasters under whom I had the good fortune to serve in the intercolonial trade in sail have now passed away. Captain Rodney Matheson, so well known as master of the barque Jessie Craig, died some years ago in Melbourne, as did also Captain William Nagle of the James Craig, and later of the Alexander Craig, Captain Bushell of the Emerald, and Captain Stenbeck of the barquendne Silver Cloud. Captain Longwill of the St Kilda, Captain Mann of the Southern Cross, Captain Ross of the Tsabel —all are but memories now and the boys and young men who sailed with them are in most cases elderly men who sit by their fires and hear again “ the drone astern where gurgling waters meet.”

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Chapter 13

Sailors Ashore

The barquentine Honda Isle was a pretty white painted little vessel of 261 tons register. She was built at Auckland in the year 1881 by J. Bigelow and Son and a downright good job they made of her. Built of first class heart of kauri with pohutukawa frames, she was twenty-five years old when I joined her in 1906, and all through a long and stormy passage from Thames Gulf to Sydney she made very little water to speak of, and our spells at the pumps were always of a short duration. Captain J. W. Denison, an Aucklander, was master and owner on the voyage I made in her. We towed down to the sawmills at Turua on the head of the Thames Gulf and loaded sawn timber there for Sydney. It was the month of May and getting on towards mid-winter when we sailed, towing down the river and anchoring out in the Gulf to await a favourable slant of wind. Finally, when we did get away, we spent about a fortnight on the coast trying to battle around North Cape against howling westerly gales. In disgust at such atrocious weather conditions, the old man ran back and anchored off Russell in the Bay of Islands. Here we stayed for about ten days and then made another start for Sydney. This time we kept at it, and after over forty days of beating against head winds and battling against high head seas, we at last reached Sydney. Shore labour discharged our timber at Johnston’s Bay, and the six months’ articles being up, we all met one fine morning at the shipping office near Circular Quay to be paid off.

On receiving our discharges and money three of us took lodgings at a large coffee palace near the wharves at Darling Harbour, and here we became acquainted with a miner and prospector who had just returned from North Queensland. On hearing of our experiences in the Honda Isle, and on our telling him that we were waiting for a cargo to be discharged, when we would be signing on her again, he bluntly remarked that “ He thought we were a lot of b fools.” “ Gawdstruth,” he

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declared in typical Australian jargon, “you young fellers don’t know you’re alive yet! Fancy barging around in one of those wet and hungry windjammers at four pound ten per month when you can go up to a warm country like Queensland and make that much in a day or so at tin scratching! ”

“At what?” we ejaculated.

“ Tin scratching,” replied our Australian friend. “ The freest game in the world. All you do is to book your passage to Cooktown or Cairns in the far north and hump your bluey out back where you’ll come on to the tin ore in all the creek beds. Worth seventy-five pounds a ton to-day,” he went on, “ and here’s me with one hundred golden sovereigns of the best that I made up there lately.” Saying which he pulled out a small canvas bag from an inside pocket and proceeded to count out a hundred golden sovereigns.

“ That’s better than seafaring, me boys,” he said. “ Give it a go and I’ll swear that you don’t sign aboard any of those lousey windjammers again.” We sat around in our little room and discussed the whole project late into the night with our prospecting friend and then we made up our minds that we would go and do likewise. Taff, our Welsh shipmate from the Honda Isle, and Alf from Deal in England, thrashed the matter out till nearly daylight.

“ What will we do if our money runs out before we get any tin wat-effer?” asked Taff in a dubious vein.

“ Put the swag up and strike out for a better ground,” answered Alf. “Anything’s better than going to sea in these intercolonial timber ships or the deep-watermen either,” he added. Alf had seen service in the Royal Navy, and quitting that had made several deep water voyages, one in the Yankee hell ship Henry B. Hyde. His love of the sea was waning fast and in this project he saw a way to get clear of it. Taff, however, was a bom seaman who had started as boy in the little Welsh schooners and had eventually arrived in the Colonies in the fast sailing barque County of Anglesea, and it was to him, as it was to myself, a bit of a wrench to go ashore and have done with the ships and the sea. At breakfast in the morning, though, it was finally decided upon that we would not sign articles in the Handa Isle again. We would go to the A.U.S.N. Company’s

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office and enquire about the trip up to Caims. The S.S. Wyandra was going north as far as Brisbane in a few days’ time, the clerk told us, so on the spur of the moment we booked our fares by her, and so finally settled the matter.

During the ensuing days we strolled around Sydney and fretted with the impatience of impetuous adventurers eager to be off on a new quest. Becoming tired of such mundane enjoyment as trips in the Manly ferries and tram rides out to Bondi and Coogee, we would spend hours strolling up and down George Street with an occasional adjournment into some quiet little bar where we would, with all the enthusiasm of youth, discuss our forthcoming project with some charming barmaid as an audience. It was on one of these strolls down George Street that I met my brother, who had sailed from Auckland for New York some years previously by the little Yankee barque Charles G. Rice. He had not been long in Sydney, having come down from Vancouver by the old Union Steam Ship Company Miowera, and soon after arrival he had shipped in a coasting steamer. On hearing of our proposed venture he was eager to join us, and the following day he took his discharge and money and booked his fare in the Wyandra with us.

Making arrangements with our boarding-house keeper to look after all our heavy gear such as sea chests and sea-bags, with oilskins and sea boots and the like, we boarded the Wyandra in fairly light trim as sailors say.

On the way north, Tom, my brother, told me of his passage from Auckland to New York in the barque Charles G. Rice. They had left Auckland in the month of June, mid-winter, and had a dirty run across the Southern Ocean to Cape Horn, after which they ran into better weather as they made their way north. Passing close by the island of Martinique, in the French West Indies, their decks were smothered in ashes, and daylight was turned into darkness when that island was devastated by a volcanic eruption in that year, 1902. On entering port at New York the Charles G. Rice was run down by an outward bound steamer and stripped of all her yards. She was running in with a fair wind and the yards laid dead square. It was during the hours of darkness, and the sidelights, being carried aft in the mizzen rigging, as was the custom in many small sailing ships in

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those days, were obscured by the mainsail which was set at the time. At the enquiry the steamer’s people swore that no lights were visible aboard the barque, and that if the sidelights were lit they were blotted out by the set mainsail. The Charles G. Rice’s crew swore that the mainsail was hauled up in the bundines and that the lights were not obscured. My brother, who was only a lad at the dme, said that the insurance company had paid all hands aboard the Charles G. Rice well to say that the mainsail was hauled up, and the verdict went in favour of the barque. On getting clear from the Charles G. Rice, my brother was promised a chance to go to the West Indies, in a litde Islandtrading brigantine, by one of the boarding-house runners. He was doomed to disappointment however, for the small tug which had been engaged to take the crew aboard ran them down to the big four-masted, three-skysail-yard barque Shenandoah, outward bound for Kobe, Japan. He told me that on the passage out to Japan the captain, Captain Chapman, proved to be a real gentleman, but that the first mate was nothing more nor less than a typical Down-easter bully. He had shipped as ordinary seaman, and ordinary seamen in the Shenandoah were housed in quarters of their own, the same as apprentices in British vessels. The food was good and, generally speaking, he liked the ship, but the first mate and the mixed crowd forrard were too much for him, so he cleared out on arrival at Kobe. Joining an American steamer he had gone across to Puget Sounds and had then done a spell up country in the State of Washington, working in a lumber camp. From there he had made his way to Vancouver where he joined one of the Empress Line steamers running out to China and Japan and then, after several more changes, he had arrived back in Sydney in the old Miowera. “ And now here we are bound for North Queensland to try our hand at tin scratching,” I said, after listening to my brother’s account of his rovings by sea and land.

At Brisbane we changed over to another steamer, a smaller vessel which took us to Townsville, and here we went on in another steamer which was smaller still. This last little coaster was crowded with passengers all bound to the far north of Australia. At every small port we called at, more and more passengers joined us, among them being quite a large number of

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Chinese. At the time of which I write, 1906, the order had gone forth to send back to their island homes all the indented Kanaka labourers on the sugar plantations, and a miscellaneous collection of white labourers was pouring into North Queensland in consequence. Several times at little backwater ports planters had implored us to go ashore and work for them on their plantations out back. But nothing that they could say would induce us to give up our intention to go tin scratching further north.

“We didn’t come all the way from Sydney to take the place of Kanakas whateffer,” remarked Taff to one fellow who was more persistent than all the rest.

“ Well, young feller-me-lad, you may be glad to take a job on the sugar plantations or in a sugar mill before you’re finished with North Queensland,” he flung back as he made his way down our gangway at Mourilyan. Finally we tied up alongside the wharf at Cairns where the little steamer was to stay for a day or so before proceeding on her way south again. From here a small steamboat not much larger than a good-sized launch connected up with Port Douglas and Cooktown, but we decided that we would strike inland from here as we could take the train to Chillago via the Bowen Falls. Cairns in those days was a bustling litde seaport sprawled along a waterfront, lined here and there with tall Snd graceful coconut palms. We carted our portmanteaux ashore up the long wharf and arranged with a boarding-house proprietress in Sheridan Street to stay a day or so. Mrs Whittaker was one of the best and made us thoroughly welcome. I always remember even to this day the wonderful table that she kept.

“ Just put your bags upstairs in your rooms,” she said. “ Dinner will be ready in about an hour’s time.” We put our gear away and then went to sit outside under a wide verandah on the footpath. Presently we heard a voice call out from a window above us to a woman on the verandah of a house opposite. “ Flow is he getting on now, Mrs ? ”

Back came the reply in a somewhat nonchalant manner, we thought, “ Oh, he’s dead.”

“ Dead ? ” repeated the voice above us. “ What did he die of?”

“ True plague,” replied the woman across the road.

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“ I think maybe we’d better be moving off from here by the morning’s train?” remarked Taff.

“ Yes,” replied Alf, “ we’d better, before this true plague gets us and puts a stopper on our tin scratching adventure.” Next morning four ex-sailormen, carrying a small portmanteau each, and an Edison phonograph with a box of records, which we had carried all the way from Sydney, climbed aboard the train and set off for Chillago. The view of the Bowen Falls a litde way out from Cairns was wonderful, the train crawling precariously along a narrow side-cutting up the mountain side almost underneath the falls which come hurtling down from a great height above. That afternoon we pulled up at Chillago, one of the most godforsaken spots I’d ever landed at.

This was where we got off, and from here on to Flaggy Creek, we would have to carry the swag through bush tracks all the way. A long low corrugated-iron building, whose roof shimmered with a mirage-like effect under the blazing afternoon sun, proclaimed the fact in amateurish lettering over the door that intoxicating and spirituous beverages were dispensed there. We strolled across, and entering the bar were soon engaged in conversation with the barman, a burly individual with shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow, who perspired profusely. A motley gathering of miners, prospectors and swaggers stood and sat around drinking lukewarm beer from huge mugs. They eyed our little party critically. Over our mugs of the same lukewarm beer we talked of our proposed venture with the proprietor, who was also the chief barman.

“ Flaggy Creek ? ” he repeated, when we told him of our destination. “ It’s a good way from here boys, and listen to me, you’ll never get there in that clobber,” indicating our doublebreasted blue serge suits and portmanteaux. “Take my tip boys, stroll out along the track on your way and towards evening pitch a camp, stay there for the night, and in the early morning dump a whole lot of that garbage and put your swags up in a proper manner. Take no notice of any other coves humping the bluey ” (i.e. carrying the swag), he added. “ There’s any God’s amount of them hereabouts, some the real McKay (old prospectors), others just hoboes and travellers, bound nowhere in particular, and never guilty of doing a day’s work in their lives. Keep clear

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of them gentry,” cautioned our friend the publican. “ Some of them would rook you for your shoe-laces.” His knowledge of the north, and of swaggers, tin scratching, mining, prospecting and the like, was profound, and before parting from him we thanked him heartily.

“You coves going far?” enquired a couple of deadbeats lying stretched out on the footpath outside the pub door.

“No, just up here visiting an old cobber who lives out back here a bit,” answered Alf. “ Don’t want those dirty looking swabs following us around,” said Alf looking back over his shoulder as we walked out of Chillago. That evening we camped under some great towering blue gum trees just off the track. There was no need to pitch a tent as the weather was wonderfully fine and the ground dry and hard under the sweet-smelling blue gum leaves. As a matter of fact we had not brought a tent with us, our friend in Sydney telling us that we could easily obtain one out on the tin-fields from our storekeeper.

Early next morning we were up at the peep of dawn, and after a hasty snack of bread and cheese washed down with a billy of hot tea, we commenced to sort out only the very necessary articles to go into our swags.

“ No want him ? ” said a deep voice from behind us, as Alf slung his bowler hat away into the undergrowth. Taken by surprise we all turned quickly to see who our early morning visitor might be. He was a big black fellow, clad in an old blue denim shirt, and a ragged straw hat on his head.

“No want him? Jackie him want,” he repeated slinging the battered old straw hat away and pulling the bowler hat hard down on his head.

“ All right, you keep him,” said Alf, whereupon with a broad grin on his ugly face the black fellow replied,

“ Jackie him like’im too much.” Presently our friend Jackie was joined by half-a-dozen other Jackies and three or four Marys, as their women folk were called, while in the background half hidden in the underscrub, we could sec a little gathering of piccaninnies peering at us through the thick growth. Before we moved off with our swags up, three or four Jackies were strutting proudly around with our old discarded felt hats perched at rakish angles on their heads. One fellow whose only garment was a

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shabby old grey overcoat, swaggered off with a white starched collar tied around each leg above the knee, his Mary following admiringly in his wake. Not to be outdone by her Jackie, one Mary sweltered in an old double-breasted navy pilot-cloth peajacket, which Alf used to wear at the wheel on cold nights in the Handa Isle. It mattered little to Mary that the brass buttons " ere tarnished, and the coat still bore visible evidence of having been saturated innumerable times with salt water. No other Marv in that clan could boast a double-breasted brass-bound monkey pea-jacket. And so we disposed of our superfluous gear and set off on our long tramp in much more suitable manner than when we had started from Chillago. The black fellows had got down on our discarded portmanteaux like “so many Bromlykitcs on to dead Malays, ’ as Alf noted in naval parlance, and now, rigged out as bona fide Australian swaggers, we took to the road.

Never will I forget that tramp through the wild bush country of outback North Queensland years ago. Great tall blue gumtrees towered overhead for most of the way, while perched high among their branches could be seen the white plumed cockatoos who were continuously emitting wild shrieks. Every now and then we would pass great conical-shaped ant hills, so large that it seemed almost unbelievable that such small insects as ants had built them. It just goes to show what unity of purpose can achieve even in the most minute of living things. Finally after carrying the swag for several days we arrived at our destination. There seemed to be any amount of tin ore in the dried up creek beds, but on talking the matter over with a lot of old fossickers, some of whom had done well at tin scratching, we came to the conclusion that we had arrived at the dry season, and that even if we accumulated a good quantity of tin ore there would be no rain to sluice it for weeks and weeks. We were at the end of our tether as far as financial resources went. What to do now was the question. We decided to tramp it back to the coast. Cairns for preference, get work there, save up a few pounds, and then make back here when the rains came. So once more it was put the swags up and take to the trail again.

The tramp back was hard indeed. Half-way towards our destination the money ran out, and had it not been for the kind-

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ness of some of the out-back settlers and various surveyors’ camps, we should probably have gone near starving before we reached Cairns. One sweltering morning we were just about at our wits’ end to know where the next feed was coming from. We tramped silently along down a mountainside through heavy bush country, each armed with a heavy stick to strike at the big black snakes which often would wriggle across our path. Suddenly a clearing opened up ahead, and then we saw the roof of a house, with a tin chimney half hidden amidst the heavy growth around it. Making our way along an overgrown path towards it, our hopes of a meal were dashed to the ground when we found that it was a deserted homestead. Groping around in what appeared to be an old garden in search of some eatable vegetables, we came across a tombstone tilted over on one side. It had been erected to the memory of the erstwhile setder’s wife and small child some years before, and he, we surmised, had in a fit of dejection walked off the place. And this was all that now remained of some happy couple’s fond dream, a half-ruined and deserted house and an overgrown bush clearing, in the midst of which was this lone grave.

We did not leave this place absolutely hungry, however, for on fossicking around we came across a lemon tree loaded with lemons with a very thick skin and also some tree tomatoes. It is surprising what a good meal could be made off lemon peel and tree tomatoes, and next morning we set off again in better spirits. A day or so later we came across a sugar plantation, and here we had a feed of sweet juicy sugar cane, which lasted us until we came to a small farmer’s holding, where Alf procured four eggs with our last remaining threepence. On enquiring at the farmhouse, we were told that the Mulgrave Sugar Mill was just a few miles farther down the valley, where work could be had for the asking. So, making this our objective, we reached it that same evening. The mill consisted of one large building, which contained the crushing plant for the cane, and numerous outbuildings such as barracks for the men and the like.

“ You coves looking for a job ? ” called a voice to us in the fast gathering dusk as we approached what seemed to be the main dining hall.

“ Yes,” we replied. “ Who do we see about it ?

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“ Just go right in and get a feed and camp down for the night; you can see Mr Harris in the morning,” answered the man. We went in, and believe me, if roast beef and sweet potatoes were never regarded as a luxurious diet before, they were so now, by four half-starved sailormen. After a good meal we were able to look around and observe our surroundings a little. This main dining room was the downstairs part of a large building which was roofed with corrugated-iron and had sides made of crossed laths or battens. Upstairs was the sleeping quarters for men who lived on the premises. Here were dozens of camp stretchers and we took possession of four of them. The queerest conglomeration of men were assembled round the dining tables. None seemed to have been there for any great length of time, in fact it seemed as if about two-thirds of the company worked at the mill and that the others were just passing through, and had stayed there for a night and for a couple of meals. I asked one nondescript-looking individual some questions regarding the working conditions at the mill.

“ Gawdstruth, mate, I don’t know nothin’ about it! ” he replied indignantly. “ I’m a traveller," he added. “In the morning you’ll see my old moke out in the paddock there. I’ve travelled all the way from New South Wales on ’im, I don’t work, I’m a traveller and my old moke, ’e carries my swag and what tucker I picks up along the road.” Asked as to where his ultimate destination may be, the ‘ traveller ’ vaguely replied that he had none in particular, but that, during the course of his wanderings “he supposed he’d make South Australia.” Before I turned in for the night I strolled across to the bank of the river nearby, and stood watching the dark swirling waters rushing down towards the sea. “ Thank God the sea is not far away and a man can always go back to it if things don’t pan out too good ashore,” I soliloquized.

I was interrupted in my meditations by a tall gaunt-looking person coming up behind. “ Good evening,” he said, in a rather pleasant manner.

“ Good evening,” I replied.

“ Do you know that the whole of this flat is undermined by a maze of subterranean rivers, and that at any moment the land on which we now stand may subside, and be swept off out to

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sea ? The mill, barracks, cookhouse, in fact the whole bally box of tricks?” he said in an awed voice which trembled with the profundity of his statement.

“ What makes you think that ? ” I asked him.

“ My boy, I have always been a keen student of geology,” he replied. “ And all the indications hereabouts, lead me to the same conclusion.” He then went on, in an erratic, rambling manner, to describe to me the geological ages, the formation of the stratum, and the origin of the Neolithic man, and in fact such a host of other subjects that I was glad to break away from him and rejoin my mates in the barracks. We sat on a bench beside our camp beds and discussed the ‘ queer fellow ’ as we dubbed him. A typical Australian of the out-back, who was sitting smoking nearby, overheard us and broke in with, “ Talking about the ratty cove, boys ? He’s gone a million, a whole tribe,” he said.

“ Who is he? ” we asked in chorus.

“ Couldn’t tell yer, mates,” he answered. “ Only that he’s been loafing around here for the last six months, never does any work, but nobody seems to mind that. I heard tell that he has been a professor or something at some university down south. Anyhow it’s quite certain that he’s off his onion now.”

The erstwhile professor was only one of many queer characters we met while" at the sugar mill. In fact they ranged from a broken-down army officer from India to the ‘ traveller ’ who blew in and just stayed overnight for a couple of meals. Our stay at the Mulgrave sugar mill was only of short duration. For one thing, the wages, one pound per week were not sufficiently enticing to encourage us to stay longer. True it was that we had our keep thrown in, but even roast beef and sweet potatoes become monotonous when one has them for breakfast, dinner and tea.

One hot sunny day we pulled out, travelling by a small local train into Cairns, which was only a few miles away. Here we were welcomed back again at Mrs Whittaker’s boarding-house, the girls giving us a great ragging over our short-lived tinhunting expedition. After staying a week at the boarding-house, during which time we all secured jobs of different sorts, we decided that the living expenses were too high, and that if we

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wanted to save enough to make a move later on we should have to find a more economical way of living.

“ Tents are the thing,” declared Taff. “ Man alive, you can live like a lord in a tent. Have whateffer you like to eat and no rent to pay.”

Yes, tents solved the problem. There was a large area of waste land up the river near the sawmill, and here we decided to pitch our new homes. It mattered little to us that the aforesaid land was inundated for the greater part by the high spring tides, and that the close growing mangrove trees formed an ideal hiding-place for stray alligators. Picking one of the higher levels where the spring tides could not reach us, we hewed a clearing in among the mangroves and pitched our two tents. Tom and I took one, and Taff and Alf the other, and for a couple of months we lived a very free and easy life. I had taken a job in the sawmill when we moved over from the town to the mangrove patch, while my mates were working over in the town at loading the sugar steamers and such like jobs. On the weekends we rambled around the waterfront to take a look at the various craft lying alongside the wharves. It was on one of these rambles that we ran across a couple of young fellows from Melbourne who had travelled north with us from Sydney. They had also gone outback looking for tin, and having had no luck had made their way back to Cairns too. They were now looking for a chance to work their way back down south again. Being clerical chaps, with no previous experience of knocking around, they were finding things going pretty hard.

“ If only we could get down to Brisbane we should be all right,” said the elder of the two, whom we knew as George. “ But every boat we try, they tell us that they don’t want any greenhorn passage workers, and as our funds are just about done we haven’t a hope of paying our fares back.”

There was an old topsail schooner called the Maris Stella lying alongside the wharf. She was loading sawn timber for Brisbane, and on mentioning this fact to George and his friend they were all eagerness to get a passage in her. The question was how to work it. The old skipper was bound to ask questions regarding their seafaring experience when they approached him, so that afternoon when all hands were ashore, we took George and his

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mate aboard and commenced to initiate them into the mysteries of schooner sailing. Whether our efforts in this direction had anything to do with it or not, George and his mate were signed on the Maris Stella for the passage to Brisbane as ordinary seamen, and as she set sail a few days afterwards we all gathered on the wharf to wave them a farewell. Old and weatherbeaten though she looked, she evidently arrived at her destination safe and sound as I saw her name in the Register of Australian and New Zealand Shipping some years afterwards. In it she was listed as a wooden schooner of 90 tons register, built at Bateman’s Bay, N.S.W. in 1879, and that she had had her last survey in Townsville in 1907. Some weeks after George and his mate sailed by the Maris Stella, the question cropped up as to when we would start off back for the tin fields again. Alf was very enthusiastic still as to the ultimate success of tin scratching outback. Taff was only lukewarm about it now, and neither Tom nor I felt like another experience of ‘ humping the bluey ’ on an empty stomach. In the end Tom and I decided to make our way south again and continue to follow the sea as a calling. Taff somewhat reluctantly agreed to go back with Alf, and give it one more go out on the tin fields, and soon after this talk the Tom Fisher arrived from Thursday Island and so settled the question definitely as far as Tom and I were concerned.

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Chapter 14

Back to Sea Again

I never was on the dull tame shore But I loved the great sea more and more.

The Tom Fisher was a fore and aft schooner of about sixty or seventy tons register. On the Queensland certificate of discharge which I received on leaving her in Brisbane her official number is given, but no tonnage is stated. She had come down from Thursday Island to Cairns to load cedar logs for Brisbane, and on arrival had hauled in to a berth alongside the mill wharf. That evening I went aboard and interviewed her skipper about shipping in her.

“Yes,” he had answered. “I am a couple of hands short, but do you know anything about handling timber-jacks and stowing logs ? ” On my telling him that I had sailed in the New Zealand timber scows he promised me a job at once, and told me to tell Tom that there was a job for him also.

I went back to my mates in the tents and told them the news. Taff and Alf, old shipmates of mine in the Handa Isle, tried to induce us to set out with them for the tin fields, but seeing that we had'quite made up our minds, they desisted in their persuasions.

“When do you start work aboard the schooner?” Alf then inquired.

“ The day after tomorrow,” I replied. “ The skipper says the logs will be down by rail and he wants all hands aboard then to commence loading.”

“ You’ll have to give the mill boss notice that you’re leaving,” said Taff.

“ I’ve already done that. I met him on the wharf as I came ashore, and it did raise a rumpus between him and the skipper. He tore back aboard the schooner and wanted to fight the skipper for taking one of his men from him.”

“Why, can’t he get another man in your place?” asked Taff.

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“Yes, he could,” I answered, “for the stacking timber job in the yard, but it’s only the last couple of days or so that he found out that I could do the turning for him. His turner cleared out for Townsville about a week ago and on his finding out that I had learned how to turn as a boy, he had just given me the job, and he thought the rise in wages, from six bob a day in the yard to ten-and-six a day on the lathe, would have kept me.”

“ Well you are a damn fool,” said Alf. “ Chucking up ten-and-six a day ashore to go back to sea again for four-pound-ten a month. I’m darned if I would,” he concluded in disgust.

But there was nothing for it but to join the Tom Fisher, and pull out on the old trail, the trail that is ever new! A couple of days later Tom and I took up our quarters aboard the schooner. It took three or four days to load the cargo of cedar logs. As the Tom Fisher had a very long main hatch we did not experience any great difficulty in filling the hold, lowering each log down into its place by means of a heavy derrick and three-fold wire tackle. Finally we lashed a long log on deck on each side of the main hatch and then we were just about ready for sea. All the while we had been loading we had lived like fighting cocks aboard, by reason of the fact that our cook was one of those rare specimens not often met with aboard sailing ships, a real master of his profession. He had been cook in a big hotel ashore, and was now anxious to make his way south again, to the lights and life of Sydney. His intentions in this respect were good, but the execution of them was remarkably rotten, as on the day before our intended sailing he set out on such a riotous drinking bout that it had ended on his being arrested and confined to the local lock-up for seven days. The old man was furious and in place of our greatly prized hotel chef had engaged a mild looking Malay boy, who sailed under the name of Willie. Sad to relate, however, Willie belied his looks, and at the end of his first day aboard he had imbibed of the local intoxicating beverage to such an extent that he ran amok, and tore around the decks armed with an axe with which he threatened to cleave any one in two should they get in his path. Suddenly the sight of the mainmast in front of him caused him to stop and accuse it, the mainmast, of following him around. He raised his axe to deal it a murderous blow, but the skipper got in first with a blow across the

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back of Willie’s head with a hardwood hatch batten. Willie dropped like a felled ox, and he too was hustled off to the lockup, prior to being brought before the magistrate and charged with mutinous conduct aboard the schooner Tom Fisher. A weedylooking individual, whom we dubbed Cockney Jim, now appeared aboard in the role of cook, and from the first we realized that he could not boil salt water without burning it. However, by the irony of fate, it was Cockney Jim who sailed with us from Cairns as cook.

We spent our last night ashore in company with Alf and Taff, and later on in the evening we picked up with two of the Sea Lark’s men whom we had met on her last visit to Cairns. The Sea Lark was an H.M. surveying vessel working along the Barrier Reef. We strolled around the town saying farewell and shouting for any friends we ran across, until Alf suggested hiring an old four wheel cab that was drawn up alongside the kerb. This was right into our hands, so hailing the old driver who was lolling in a state of somnolence high up on his driver’s seat, we were soon all scrambling aboard.

“ Where to, boys ? ” he asked when we were all seated.

“ Oh, just anywhere around the town,” said Alf. “ But see that you stop at all the pubs,” he cautioned.

“ Gerrup! ” flung the cabby to his two somewhat ancient looking horses, and at a jog-trot we moved off.

“ Home, James, and don’t spare the horses,” called out one of our bluejacket friends to the cabby, and so we set off on a jaunt that took us the round of the Cairns’ hotels, to say nothing of a visit to a Chinese theatre. At most of our places of call we received a real good welcome but when Taff mistook a frail whatnot loaded with specimens of the Great Barrier Reef coral for an easy chair and fetched out on the floor in the midst of the wreckage, we realized that it was time to beat a retreat. We got the cabby to drive us to the railway track leading down through the mangroves to the mill wharf. He jibbed at our suggestions that he should drive the cab along the track between the lines to the wharf where the schooner was lying.

“Do yer want me to wreck me cab and break me ’orses legs?” he remonstrated, so seeing that we could not get him to go any farther, we set off along the railway lines, after wishing him a fervent farewell.

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“ Good-bye, old horse,” said Alf. “ May you and your old cab never be parted.”

“Good-bye, boys, an’ a sailor’s farewell ter yer,” he called back as he whipped up his horses for the drive back to town.

Alf and Taff saw us safely aboard the Tom Fisher and as Alf said, “ Not to show any sign of ‘ inhospitality ’ ” they decided to stay aboard the night with us. I went to sleep about 2 a.m. with Cockney Jim singing “Dahn the street I ’ears a bleedin’ riot, five and twenty cabmen waitin’ there,” in a vain endeavour to outdo Taff, who was doing his best to render a song in Welsh.

We sailed the following morning with a hot nor-west wind chasing us out past the lofty highland of Cape Grafton at a great clip. I laughed as I stood at the wheel and took a farewell glance at the little town of Cairns over my shoulder.

“Good-bye to you and good-bye to all such mad-brained notions as tin-scratching, humping the bluey, working in sugar and saw-mills and the like,” I muttered to myself, as the shipping and buildings receded astern, and finally merged into a blurred conglomeration of white and black objects, surmounted by a shimmering heat haze thrown upwards from a hundred galvanized iron roofs.

“Glad to be leaving Cairns?” said the skipper coming up from below and seeing the smile on my face.

“Yes, lam glad,” I answered. “I’m happy to feel a deck under my feet again. It’s no place for a sailorman, humping the bluey away out back there, or turning to on the blast of a sugar or sawmill’s whistle every morning.”

“No, you’re right there,” he said, and then went on, “As a boy I sailed with my father in a small schooner around the Baltic ports, and across to England from Germany. My father was a German and before I was 16 years old he sold the schooner and emigrated out to Queensland, where he took up sugar cane planting. But the shore was not for me. No, I didn’t like it,” he added with some vehemence. “So I ships away out of Maryborough in a blackbirding schooner, and spent years among the islands recruiting native labour for the Queensland Sugar Plantations. Now I hold a Queensland master’s papers, so I am happy to stay at sea, though this is heaven to the North Sea and Baltic trading. I would not care to go back to that life,” he concluded.

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Next morning we were slipping along in smooth water inside Dunk and Hinchinbrook Islands. This was wonderful sailing. Coming north in the steamer crowded with passengers, one did not have time or the opportunity to observe all the wonders of this North Queensland coastline. Inside the Barrier Reef all the way, there is no sea to speak of, no huge white crested rollers to contend with. The schooner just laid over to a good stiff breeze from over the starboard quarter and snored along like a liner passing through the doldrums. We sailed down past Townsville and Cape Bowling Green which does not belie its name, and there one fine morning ran into a stiff southerly in Whitsunday Passage. As the huge mainsail started to ‘go ’ up and down the seams with the continual beating to and fro, we ran in and anchored in a little sheltered bay under the mainland. Here we spent a couple of days sewing sails, and waiting for the wind to shift, which it finally did and sent us flying along in fairly calm water again while we made Cape Manifold to the south of Port Bowen. Here the wind backed to the nor-east and as we drew south clear of Swain Reefs at the southernmost extremity of the Barrier Reef, we were picked up by the long ocean swell coming straight in from the open sea, and tore along at one moment down in the hollow and the next surging over the crest of those white-capped steeds of the broad Pacific Ocean.

Seventeen days after leaving Cairns we passed in between Moreton Island and the mainland and came to an anchor in Moreton Bay, near the mouth of Brisbane River. A tug came down next day and towed us to Brisbane, where we moored the Tom Fisher at a sawmill wharf on the south side of the river. Here we discharged our cargo of cedar logs and Tom and I left the schooner to catch a coasting steamer bound for Sydney. As we left the shipping office the morning we got paid off from the Tom Fisher, the first mate of the Queensland Government steamer Merrie England approached me and said, “ Would you like to join the Merrie England for a voyage to Thursday Island and New Guinea? We have vacancies for a couple of young A.B.s if you’d care to join?”

“No thanks, sir,” I answered. “ We’ve had enough of up north there for awhile, and we’re striking out for more civilized parts.”

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But I often have looked back and regretted our decision on that occasion, as it would have been a most interesting experience in those days. Nowadays civilization has overrun most of the islands of the Pacific and in consequence they have lost all of their charm and romance. After a fast run down the coast in the old S.S. Adelaide we arrived back in Sydney on Christmas Eve minus the small canvas bag full of golden sovereigns for which we had set out some four or five months earlier.

Chapter 15

The Barque “Northern Chief”

In the days of sailing ships the Shipping Office at Circular Quay, Sydney was always a scene of activity. Ships’ crews were signing on or paying off pretty well every day, and the morning Tom and I went round to look for a ship was no exception to the rule. On a large blackboard hanging up in the Shipping Office was a notice which read: “Wanted 6 A.B.s for the four-masted barque Port Jackson,” and right underneath this was chalked up “ 2 A.B.s for barque Northern Chief.” The Port Jackson’s notice interested us. We thought that probably she would be shipping some hands for the run to London whither she was bound with wool, and that it would probably be worth about £3O or £4O for the run. On inquiry, though, we found that her Old Man was seeking hands at £4 per month. This we reckoned was no good to us, as it meant landing in London with only about £lO or £l2. We therefore decided in favour of the Northern Chief for the usual intercolonial wage of £4 1 os. per month.

On interviewing her skipper, Captain D. Campbell, one of our own countrymen from the Nova Scotia settlement of Waipu, just north of Auckland, he agreed to ship us on the understanding that we would join the ship at Johnston’s Bay the following afternoon. It was a Friday, so going back to our lodgings we packed up our gear and sent it aboard by the butcher’s launch that afternoon.

“ Don’t be learte,” the skipper cautioned us in deep Nova Scotian brogue. “ Ar’ll be towing up to Newcastle behind a Glasgae barque tomorrow afternoon.”

On our arriving at Johnston’s Bay the following morning there was no sign of the Northern Chief or the Glasgae barque either. Both had vanished into the thin air and there we were in just what we stood and without a red cent between us. Hastening round to Circular Quay, we inquired of a small tugboat skipper whether he had seen the Northern Chief towing out.

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“Yes,” he replied. “She passed down the harbour behind a little deep-waterman at daybreak this morning.”

We went back to our lodgings, and on hearing of our plight the kindly old landlady said, “ Never mind, boys, I’ll let you have the fare to Newcastle by boat and you can post it back to me before you sail from there.”

That evening we went aboard the Hunter River Company S.S. Newcastle and as daylight broke we slipped in past the Knobbys and had the pleasure of seeing the Northern Chief lying alongside a deep-water barque on one of the buoys, waiting her turn to go alongside the dyke to load. The Newcastle pulled in to her berth on the town side and on going ashore we were lucky enough to get a passage out to our ship in another ship’s boat which was just pushing clear of the landing steps. The first mate of a large four-masted barque sat in the stem sheets and, after hearing our story, he said in a half jocular, half serious manner, “ Not thinking of changing ships are you, boys ? ”

“Where are you bound, sir?” I asked.

“Coal to Antofogasta and back to Sydney for orders,” he replied.

“ What’s the wages?” we next asked.

“ £4 per month, boys, and she’s a good living ship into the bargain.”

“ No, we can’t take it on, sir, all our gear is aboard the little barque there, and the money is not enticing enough to leave our belongings behind.”

“Well, I’m sorry, boys, I’d have liked to have had you with us. They’re not a bad crowd we’ve got aboard so far but we’re still four or five A.B.s short. However, you know your own minds best and I’m not the man to shanghai any man aboard a ship. So here you are my lads, hop aboard your little barque and good luck to you.”

“ Same to you, sir, and a pleasant voyage,” we replied as we scrambled up the Northern Chiefs side by means of a rope ladder, and in an instant the big ship’s boat had swept past us on her way up river.

On jumping down on to the main deck we ran into the mate of the Northern Chief, and I remember him as well today as on that day when I first met him. Good old Mr Boreham, I

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suppose he has reached Fiddler’s Green long ago, but memories of him always call to my mind his short stocky figure and pleasant face, a typical Londoner, and a real seaman of the old school.

“ Hullo, boys, so you’re the two brothers who were to have joined us in Johnston’s Bay yesterday?”

“ Yes sir,” we replied, “ but you were not there for us to join so we’ve had to chase after the ship in the Newcastle .”

“ No, boys, I know how it was, but the Old Man had to come on behind that deep-waterman and she left earlier than he expected. You’d better go aft and report to him that you’re aboard, he’s going ashore to church in a few minutes.”

We found Captain Campbell coming up the after companionway and on seeing us he said with his Waipu drawl, “Hullo, my lads, so here you are, well ye’re better learte than never. Away forrard now and see ter yer gear.”

And that was all that we saw of Captain Campbell, for before we sailed he was appointed master of an intercolonial cargo steamer. I heard that years afterwards he retired from the sea and eventually died on his farm at his beloved Waipu. Captain Spruit, a Hollander, was appointed master of the Northern Chief in Captain Campbell’s place, and a fine Old Man he proved to be. On coming on board he sent me ashore to his lodgings in Hunter Street to bring his charts and sextant aboard. On arrival back at my boat at the landing steps I was greeted with loud applause by a group of wharfies.

“ Going for a lone-handed cruise around the world, lad ? ” they banteringly inquired.

“Yes, how about you fellows shipping with me?” I responded as I got into the small boat. But they were having none of that and I quickly lost the gist of their remarks as I rowed back to the ship.

When the Northern Chief was berthed alongside the dyke to take in her cargo of coal we had ahead of us a huge four-masted British barque, and astern a big three-skysail-yard full rigged American ship. It looked like a picture representing dignity and impudence, our little white-painted barque o’ershadowed by these two great tall-masted blue watermen of the seven seas. The four-masted barque would probably have been over two

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thousand tons register, while the big wooden American ship would have run her a close second. The Northern Chief, as I have mentioned before, was but two hundred and sixty-three tons, and with an overall length of one hundred and twentyfive feet and a beam of twenty-seven feet she certainly looked small and insignificant in her present company.

Our little barque had been built by McKay of Auckland in 1886 and one can imagine with what pride her builders had launched her, and what an interest she would have roused among the seafaring fraternity of the then small port. And here she was, after twenty-one years of battling to and fro across the stormy Tasman Sea, still doing good service in carrying her freights of sawn timber from New Zealand and taking coal back. We were towed over to a berth astern of the Hunter River S.S. Company’s wharf on the town side of the harbour to take in some stores before sailing, and here Bob joined us. Bob was a hefty lad of about 24 years of age, and being desirous of returning to his native town of Ballarat in Victoria, had been induced by some unscrupulous boarding-house runner to ship as ordinary seaman in the Northern Chief with a view to getting there. Bob’s remarks concerning that boarding-house runner, on getting to sea in the Northern Chief and finding that she was bound to Auckland, New Zealand and not Melbourne, Victoria, are just as well left unrecorded. Bob was one of those odd characters one often meets in knocking around the world, who had, as Kipling so aptly words it, “turned his hand to almost everything in various situations round the world.” He had been in shearing camps, on dairy farms, teamster, and in fact a hundred-and-one vocations during his versatile career. But to the crew of the Northern Chief his qualifications in his erstwhile jobs meant nothing. Bob was no seaman. He had never been aboard any kind of craft in his life, not even a rowing boat. Our acting-second mate or bos’n in charge of the starboard watch, a hard-bitten deep-water Norwegian sailor, told the mate that he, Bob, “vos not know de sharp end of a sheep (i.e. ship) from de blunt end.” A ship to Bob was like a horse and cart, the bow, because it went first, was the front, and the stem the back, the bulwarks were the fence, and the deck the floor, and to cap it all, that most austere and aloof personage

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the captain, was in Bob’s vocabulary the Boss. During fine weather Bob was a source of unending hilarity to the forrard crowd, but in bad weather he was cursed by all and sundry.

We were towed out past the Knobbys by one of Brown’s tugs with the familiar black and white funnel, and after the first day out commenced a dead beat across to the Three Kings against persistent easterly gales which lasted for nearly three weeks. The cry of “ All hands on deck and shorten sail” was often heard as the Old Man hung on to sail until the last thing in his endeavour to make easting. During the height of one of those easterly blows when we had the ship shortened down to lower topsails and fore topmast staysail, we were standing by one morning waiting for the word to set the foresail again. The sea was running mountains high, and the deeply laden little barque was doing her best to lift to them as they tore down upon her with never-ending fury. Suddenly one sea greater than all the rest hit us fair and square, and smothered us in a welter of heavy water and flying spume. Over and still farther over went the Northern Chief, until we thought that she would never clear herself again from those rushing waters, and then she shot out of it and staggered up over the crest of its successor, with the wash-ports gushing out great volumes of sea water along both sides. Both cables were tom out of their lockers abaft the windlass and were now ranged along the starboard scuppers, the decks were full from rail to rail and the old cook with half his pots and pans, had been washed out of his galley. The forelower topsail and fore topmast staysail were both caught by the uppermost crest of this great greybeard of a sea, and were now streaming out gallons of sea water from the saturated hollows of their canvas.

“ Loose the foresail and set it,” roared the Old Man from the poop, and as two hands jumped aloft to cast it loose, while the rest of us on deck busied ourselves with the gear, Bob sidled up to the old bos’n and remarked, “ There’s a lot of water on the floor this morning, bos’n.”

“To hell mit you ! ” yelled the infuriated bos’n. “ Lay aft mit you and tail on to that fore-sheet.” Bob tore along the flooded decks and disappeared down the after companionway. Next we saw him being propelled along the lee poop deck with the Old Man’s heavy sea-booted foot behind him.

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“ Get forrard where you belong, what the hell you come running aft here for aye?” the Old Man indignantly roared. “ Vot vor you ran aft ven I tell you to go to de fore-sheet?” yelled the bos’n, as Bob made his way forrard again.

“ Thought you told me to go and look after the Boss’s sheets,” answered Bob in a hurt tone of voice.

“Ach, you’re a tamn good-for-nothing stiff,” replied the bos’n.

The most remarkable thing about Bob was the fact that he did not know what seasickness was. When I think of many fine sailormen with whom I had sailed who had put in many miserable hours suffering from this distressing malady I wonder why it was that such a useless hobo as Bob should have been immune to it. Though it was during the midsummer that we made that passage in the Northern Chief, still the weather conditions were so appalling that one almost could have imagined that it was the middle of winter. Day after day we battled our way against strong easterlies and high seas. But this weather is often typical of the Tasman Sea, for during the time I spent in the intercolonial ships, I have often noticed that it blew just as hard in the summer months as in winter. There was little to ameliorate our existence in the flooded fo’c’sle of the little barque during that voyage. Though we had a house on deck in the Northern Chief, which was more than a lot of even larger vessels in the intercolonial trade had at that time, yet the discomfort of about six inches or a foot of water slushing about from side to side across the floor was always with us. This was owing to the fact that we were deeply laden with coal with the main deck continually awash. Yet sailing ship sailors always made a joke of everything, and the very fact of Bob being such an incontrovertible ass in all that he essayed to do, kept us in continual state of laughter. He never learned the difference between the jib topsail downhaul and the spanker sheet, or the main brace from the fore topsail halliards. As for going aloft, Bob never once ventured above the sheer-poles. During the height of one midnight blow when the cry had gone forth for “ All hands shorten sail! ” Bob had stowed himself away in the galley. The mate had hauled him out and booted him along the deck aft where the Old Man was roaring out at the top of his

ysabel The little barquentine Ysabel of Auckland. Captain Ross, master and owner, steering ship home on the last lap of the voyage from the South Sea Islands. The author made his first voyage to sea in the Ysabel.

sii i n \NDO a ii The four-masted American barque Shenandoah, at one time the largest wooden-built vessel afloat. Oik- of the author's brothers served in hei under ( aptain (lhapman.

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voice, “ Where’s the starboard watch ? Where’s the starboard watch?” A six-foot-three Yank and my brother, who was just the opposite, comprised, with Bob and the bos’n, the whole of the starboard watch.

“ We’re all here, sir,” answered the tall Yank in a grieved tone, adding, as he saw Bob’s form approaching the lee poop ladder. “There’s only me, and little Tommy, and the big hobo.”

The Yank’s reply, even though the vivid lightning was flashing and the thunder claps increasing and the ship laying over at an alarming angle, caused me to think that even in the moments of gravest danger the ludicrous is often closely allied to the sublime. We made the land in the vicinity of the Three Kings group of islands. Thick fog came down as we came into soundings with a lessening wind which was gradually veering round into the north. Finally it fell a flat calm and in the early morning watch on the day we first sighted land we lay and rolled up and down over the long ground swell which still persisted from the eastward. Aloft, from the dark shadows of canvas came the slatting of idle sails, and the rattle of loose gear and blocks, which latter squealed eerily at times as their respective sheets or clew-lines ran through them. From out of the fog overside came the long-drawn heaving sighs proclaiming the near presence of whales. At times one could almost mistake the sounds to be the long ground swell breaking on a nearby beach, indolent and slow, yet full of the sound of a great unknown strength. The scuppers gasped and gurgled as the flooded decks drained to every roll, and the melancholy blare of the fog-horn rasping out its two harsh blasts every few minutes, for a sailing vessel on the port tack did its best to make known its presence to any other wanderer of the deep in these waters.

Suddenly the Old Man’s voice from the poop broke the stillness between the fog-hom’s blare. “ Get the deep sea lead going, mister.”

“ Aye, aye, sir,” replied the mate from the main deck, where he had been supervising the bracing sharp up of the yards.

“Pass the deep sea lead forrard, boys,” he ordered as we belayed the braces. Passing the heavy lead weight along the weather side outside everything, Taff, another Welshman who was now my watchmate, carried it right to the fo’c’sle head.

K

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I stood by with the bight of the lead line in the fore rigging, while an ordinary seaman held it clear in the main.

“Are you all ready?” called the mate from the after end of the poop.

“All ready, sir,” we replied.

“ Then let go,” he called.

“ Watch, there, watch,” called Taff from the fo’c’sle head.

“ Watch, there, watch,” called the ordinary seaman in the main-chains, and then finally we heard Mr Borcham call out to the Old Man, “ Sixty fathoms, sir.”

“Sixty fathoms it is,” replied the skipper. “Just keep it going every now and then for another half-hour, Mr Boreham ! ”

“ Aye aye, sir,” said the mate. And about every five minutes or so we repeated the whole performance until we were in fortyfive fathoms, when the Old Man gave orders to “’Bout ship.” Round on the other tack the slightly increasing breeze carried us out into over sixty fathoms again, when round we came again. Through the thick wall of fog the dawn gradually merged into the day. A mollyhawk, roused from its slumbers on the slowly heaving sea by the near approach of our splashing bows, beat the sea with its outstretched wings and webbed feet in a great flurry, and with an accompaniment of frightened squawks until it rose into the air and disappeared into the fog. Just to leeward, as the fog dispersed, a great black shining mass arose from the depths of the ocean and emitting a veritable geyser of yeasty froth and steam slowly submerged again with a long heart-breaking sigh. It was the last we saw of our friends of the past night, the whales, and as the fog cleared right away a school of leaping porpoises took their place and accompanied us right up to within a few miles of the Great Island in the Three Kings group. In describing the Three Kings group of islands, Brett’s New Zealand and South Pacific Pilot says, “ There are strong tides and races between this group and the mainland,” and never was a statement more true, for anywhere in the near vicinity of the group the currents swirl and eddy in the most unprecedented manner. As we had made the land in thick fog, we had approached rather closer than we would have in clear weather, and as the wind fell away to a light breeze and then almost to a flat calm as the morning wore on, we found the current sweeping us in toward several high rocks which lie

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off the western end of the western island. Closer and closer the deeply laden little barque drifted, until we could see the long ground swell surging up and around the bases of those dangerous looking fangs. At last the Old Man could stand it no longer.

“ Clear away the port boat from the top of the house and put her over the side, Mr Boreham,” he called to the mate. Quickly we all jumped to the mate’s orders, and in double quick time we had the boat overside.

“ Four hands into the boat, and you, bos’n,” said the mate. “Take her forrard and pick up the towline from the bowsprit end,” he added. In no time we were tugging away with four oars going, and pulling the ship’s head round with a long light grass line fastened on to the bowsprit end. It seemed an eternity before the ship responded to our efforts and then slowly, very slowly, she began to come round after us and pointed her jibboom away from the danger. We kept tugging away at her for an hour or more, and then the wind having freshened up a little more from the north-east, the Old Man called us to “ Cease rowing and come alongside.”

Finally with a steady little breeze, which had all the indications of freshening, the boat was hoisted aboard again and housed in its chocks on top of the forrard house. Two days later the Northern Chief flew past Cape Brett with a snorting westerly breeze behind her and next day anchored in the stream off the Auckland wharves. We were ordered to the Chelsea Sugar works to discharge our coal cargo, on completion of which we were towed back to the City wharves and moored. As the six months’ articles were up all hands were paid off and so ended our voyage in the little barque Northern Chief.

Just a word about our shipmate ‘ Bob the hobo.’ I saw him a few days after our arrival on the driver’s seat of a huge flat-top lorry driving a fine team of draught horses for one of the big carrying firms of Auckland. He was making a far better job of handling that team than he did of hauling on the lee braces of the old barque.

“ Hullo, Bob,” I called after him.

“ Hullo, lad,” he replied cheerily, and added in an enthusiastic voice, “ This is the life for me.”

Every man to his own trade, I thought, as Bob’s burly figure disappeared round the comer of the street.

Chapter 16

The Barquentine “Southern Cross”

When I joined the barquentine Southern Cross early in 1904 she had just been bought by Captain H. Mann from the Melanesian Missionary Society. This little vessel was the successor to the Isabel cx-Southern Cross of which I have already written. As far as looks went she was I think the prettier vessel of the two, but for general utility and staunchness of build the old Isabel easily came first. The Isabel was much the faster vessel under canvas. Captain Mann’s Southern Cross was built at Weymouth in England and arrived at Auckland for the Melanesian Mission as an auxiliary barquentine with steam power. The date of her arrival I am not sure of, but it would have been in the early 1890s, for about that time Captain Ross purchased the old Southern Cross [lsabel) from the Missionary Society.

Captains Bongard and Hugget were the two best known masters of the then new Southern Cross, and under their respective commands she ran for years to the Solomon Islands, New Hebrides and Norfolk Island, making Auckland her home port. Many an Auckland boy served his first years at sea in this very popular little vessel. Then in the early 1900s she was replaced by a schooner-rigged steel steamer which was in appearance the very antithesis of her two predecessors. Of course she was a larger and more powerful vessel than any previous Southern Cross, but amongst sailor-men she was never looked upon as a thing of beauty. Her ugly clipper bow and high-wooded appearance were not what the sailor folk of Auckland had been used to in the previous missionary vessels.

When her days were finished this Southern Cross was broken up at Auckland and parts of her lie buried under one of the harbour reclamations. Captain H. Burgess of Auckland was her last commander. He had served his time in the full-rigged ship Auckland, and was in her when she was surrounded by ice in the Southern Ocean, an account of which is given in Sir Henry

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Brett’s book White Wings. At one time when Captain Burgess had the Southern Cross, he had with him as chief officer Captain Gray, who had been in command of the full-rigged ship Pass of Balmaha, afterwards to become well known as Count Von Buckner’s raider Seeadler in the first World War.

But to get back to the barquentine Southern Cross which Captain Mann had bought for the intercolonial trade. She was a wooden-built vessel of about 290 tons register, and carrying on the fore a bent foresail, lower and upper topsails, and te-gallant sail. She had a rigged-out jibboom, long and tapering, and carried four headsails. On the main and mizzen she was fore and aft rigged with boom and gaff mainsail and mizzen, and two gaff topsails. She carried staysails between the fore and main, and with all her canvas spread she was a pretty little vessel. When Captain Mann took her over her engine had been taken out and the hold extended from the after bulkhead right up into the eyes of the ship. Beneath her flooring amidships she carried concrete ballast. On deck she had two large deckhouses, one forrard, which we used as a fo’c’sle, and one aft which was used as a messroom by the afterguard. Her complement when I joined her was Captain H. Mann, Mr McLennan first mate, Charles Young bos’n in charge of a watch, cook and four able seamen. I do not remember the cook’s name, but he was a red-headed Irishman with a keen sense of humour, and not a bad cook as far as sailing ship’s cooks went in those days. Captain Mann was a typical deep-water sailing ship master and a real gentleman. He had been master of the full-rigged ship Earl Derby, and had also served in the ship Torrens, of Joseph Conrad fame. The Earl Derby had been his last ship prior to taking over the Southern Cross, but he had spent some years ashore before buying the Southern Cross.

After dumping ashore a lot of unnecessary gear which the ship had carried as a missionary vessel, such as life rafts, ventilators and the like, we proceeded to sea in ballast for Hokianga to load timber for Sydney, Captain Mann’s wife joining us at the last moment. We had a dirty passage of twenty-eight days to Hokianga, and on arrival there we towed from the Heads to Kohukohu, at the head of the harbour to load. On the way round we found that the Southern Cross was a very hard vessel to put about, owing to the fact that the aperture for the propeller in the

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dead wood just forward of the rudder had not been filled in. As soon as we had berthed alongside the wharf at Kohukohu a bailiff came aboard and the ship was seized for debt. Writs were nailed to our mainmast, and we had to wait until the captain went to Auckland before we could commence loading. Poor old Captain Mann, our sympathies were all with him, he was such a fine old gentleman, and to his crew it seemed a scurvy trick to play on him, when on top of the long passage round from Auckland, his ship had to be delayed for another fortnight by the action of some large firms who had evidently backed him when buying and fitting the vessel out. However, word came through from Auckland at last, and we carried on with the loading, the bailiff, much to our relief, pulling the writs off the mast and going ashore. Old Charlie Young cursed him “ for all the lopsided two ends and the bite of a longshore shark ” as he went off up the wharf, but I suppose the man was paid by someone to carry out his job, and that was the main thing with him, as several of us tried to explain to old Charlie. Our old bos’n’s pet antipathy was lawyers and their hirelings. “ Land sharks and sailors’ robbers, that’s what I dubs ’em,” he concluded.

As an intercolonial timber carrier the little Southern Cross was not a paying proposition. The most we could stow into her was a little over one hundred and eighty thousand feet of sawn timber. That was below hatches, and we could not put any deckload on to her, as with the hold filled, she was already down to her mark. We made a fairly good run across to Sydney and then went up to Newcastle, behind a big barque, with Fenwick’s tug Hero pulling us both along. It did not take long to fill the little barquentine with coal. One could almost feel her sink a little deeper into the water as each skip load was dropped into her. Newcastle was again crowded with sailing ships, and we had to rig in our long, overhanging jibboom before we were pushed in between a large German four-masted barque and a huge American wooden full-rigged ship. Further along the dyke several of our intercolonial barques were loading, and the night we spent alongside we went ashore with several members of their crews. It was not always safe for a man in those days to go off ashore alone in ports like Newcastle and some parts of Sydney. The rakings and scrapings of all the ports of the world hung around lonely parts of the waterfronts ready to pounce upon any

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unwary seafarer making his way aboard his ship late at night and alone. The captain of the full-rigged ship Ainsdale was killed among the coal trucks on the waterfront at Darling Harbour one Christmas time while I was there in one of our intercolonial ships years ago. And one of the crew of the old Neptune arrived aboard at Pyrmont, Sydney, one night clad only in a pair of underpants. The roughs had knocked him out in a back street and took him down for everything he possessed.

After spending the evening at a music hall, three of us arrived back on the Dyke from town by the little free ferry which used to run regularly to and fro between the Dyke and Newcastle. The second mate of one of our intercolonial barques called out “ Good night ” to us and set off alone towards his ship which lay about six ships ahead of us. Suddenly we heard a yell and sounds of a scuffle among the coal trucks. Rushing along, we found our friend being attacked by four or five hooligans and we sailed in to join in the melee.

• “Hit him, Jank,” “Down mit him, Jank” we heard as we approached, and down went our friend with two or three squareheads on top of him. We took them completely by surprise, and acting on the precept that “ thrice armed is he who gets his blow in first,” we routed them well and truly, after which we escorted our battered comrade safely aboard his ship, where in his litde cabin he insisted upon our drinking success to the Old Red Duster and confusion to all its enemies.

One of our men having left the ship in Newcastle at the last moment to ship home via the west coast of South America in a deep-waterman, a bumptious little man with a very brisk manner, but evidendy just recovering from a severe drinking bout joined us in his place. He proved to be the erstwhile master of an American barque that he had lost on a reef up in the China Seas. Since then his one occupation had been drinking intoxicating liquors whenever he could, until at last, finding himself right down and out in Newcastle, he had shipped in the Southern Cross before the mast. On arrival at Auckland he left the ship and went up country with the averred intention of giving up the sea for good.

We were ordered to load timber back for Sydney again when the coal was discharged. Our loading port was at the little river port and sawmill at Kopu, near the town of Thames, on the

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Firth of Thames. This meant a tow of over forty miles, and the Old Man was worried as the Southern Cross was not a paying proposition carrying either timber or coal. Two of us happened to mention to the mate that we had often been to the Thames by sailing scows, and that the inside passage down between the island of Waiheke and the mainland was quite negotiable for even good-sized vessels under sail. The day before we left Auckland the Old Man called us along and asked us if we thought the Southern Cross could work down inside under sail. We assured him that it was quite feasible, so off we set with a fine southwesterly breeze on our starboard quarter and, passing down Tamaki Strait inside Waiheke, we sailed through the narrow passage at the Sandspit Island, which is half way, in fine style and anchored off the mill wharf in the river late the same afternoon. The Old Man was delighted, as it had saved him quite a good sum which he would otherwise have had to pay out in towage. Loaded once more, we set out again for Sydney and made an average passage across, discharging in Sydney and then going up to Newcastle for the return load of coal. Here I had the misfortune to pick up the germ of typhoid fever, through drinking milk shakes or impure ice-cream. All the way back to New Zealand the captain treated me for what he thought was influenza, but as we neared the coast I felt that I was in for something worse than that. The terrific thirst and violent retchings got worse and worse as we drew down the coast towards Auckland, where we anchored about midday and the port doctor came aboard.

“A fine healthy looking crowd, captain,” was the doctor’s report, as he passed along in front of us lined up on the deck for his inspection. Next day, however, I was sent to hospital raging with the delirium of typhoid fever, where I lay unconscious for six weeks, and altogether spent three months in hospital.

“ You take six months’ spell ashore, young fellow,” the doctor said to me the day I left hospital, and feeling the way I did at the time, I thought his was very good advice. Three or four weeks afterwards, however, I felt well enough to be off to sea again, and this time I shipped in the barquentine lima with my old skipper Captain George Schutze. She was a fine comfortable little iron vessel and under Captain Schutze she was a proper home.

Chapter 17

Various Ships

1 joined the barquentine lima in the middle of winter in 1905. She was loading timber for Sydney at Gibbon’s Mill at Kopu, near the township of Thames, at the head of the Firth of Thames. From this mill and Bagnall’s Mill a little farther up the river on the opposite side, large quantities of timber were shipped overseas at the time of which I write. Owing to limited wharfage accommodation, vessels often had to lie at anchor in mid-stream until there was room for them to go alongside. On these occasions the township of Thames was livened up on Saturday nights by the influx of a few dozen rollicking young sailormen down to spend the evening ashore from the timber ships. It was generally a pretty hilarious crowd that made their way back to their ships round about midnight, and by the token, as the old song had it, that “the shortest way round was the nearest way home,” the railroad track was often taken in preference to the road, which wound round about considerably. Great were the competitions among the straggling line of returning seamen, many of whom would be a little under the weather, to see who could walk the farthest on a single railway line, and many were the spills we had, and broken bottles of beer in consequence. We were all young and carefree, and I still look upon all our mad escapades as among the happiest days of my life. I call to mind the night when all hands were awakened by the wild yells of one of our crew in a little barque loading at Kopu, arriving aboard minus his boots and coat, and loudly declaring that he had raced the train from Thames to Kopu, a distance of several miles. “ And kept ahead of him all the way boys, how’s that for a Hobart lad ?” he concluded. Though we gave him a good round of applause we let him know that we did not altogether believe him.

The lima, as I have already stated, was a comfortable little vessel with a good dry fo’c’sle on deck forrard. While in her I felt myself to be in the best of company. We were all New

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Zealanders forrard. Captain Schutze, who had been sailing out of New Zealand since he was sixteen years of age, generally carried a crowd of colonial boys with him, and we were all like one big family. In the lima we carried ten hands all told. Captain, mate, second mate, cook, four able seamen, one ordinary seaman, and one boy. A fatherly old mariner by the name of Popham was first mate of the lima when I sailed in her. I often regret that I did not avail myself more of the great opportunities I then had of acquiring a better knowledge of the sea and sailing ships, by conversing more with these old sailormen who had lived through the most glorious era of sail. I call to mind Mr Le Brun, a Channel Islander, who was first mate of the Ysabel after Mr Schutze left, a very friendly little man, whose sole aim in life was to make enough to send a fair allowance home to his wife in the Channel Islands. The yarns he spun of his early seafaring days brought Victor Hugo and his book, The Toilers of the Sea, back to mind.

Then there was old Captain Alexander, who had also been mate of the Ysabel in Captain Ross’s time. Many and varied had been old Captain Alexander’s adventures during his long life, from sailing in large clipper ships to knocking around the Islands in the black-birding schooners, picking up nadve labour for the Queensland sugar plantations. One of his experiences, and not a very pleasant one either, was that of bringing one of Auckland’s first dredges, the old No. 121, out from England. He told me that they were months on that voyage and that several times they nearly lost her.

Once when I had landed in Sydney after coming out from London via the Cape in one of Lund’s Blue Anchor Line steamers, I decided to go across to Auckland as a passenger in the old Union Steam Ship Mokoia. Before we left Sydney I met Captain George Schutze who asked me to look after old Captain Alexander on the run across, as he had just come down from Port Moresby, whither he had taken a new pearling lugger from New Zealand. The old skipper was just recovering from a severe bout of malaria and was pretty shaky. We arranged to share the same cabin, and I think it was one of the most pleasant trips I had ever made. Old Captain Alexander was a mine of information where matters of the sea and sailing vessels

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were concerned, and we spent hours together discussing various craft. Captain R. E. Smith, the master of the Mokoia on that occasion, on finding out that Captain Alexander, an old shipmate of his, was on board, gave orders to a steward to see that his old friend was well looked after, and in consequence our little cabin was always well supplied with fruit, and delicacies of all sorts, not forgetting a little liquid refreshment occasionally.

Some years afterwards I met old Captain Alexander in Queen Street, Auckland. He greeted me most fervently, especially when I suggested a wee drop to cheer up the nerves. Over a long glass of Old Scotch he confided in me that he had been offered the mate’s job in the ketch Lizzie Taylor.

“ But I’ll no be going, lad,” he said emphatically. “ I’m over eighty! and that’s enough,” he concluded. Poor old Captain Alexander, he did go mate of the Lizzie Taylor, and was in her when she was wrecked on the coral reefs of a South Sea Island atoll. Again I met him in Auckland.

“Yes, lad, the Lizzie Taylor is lost,” he told me. “A boy came to me while I had the watch that night and he says to me, says he, ‘ Mr Alexander, I think I hear breakers, shall I call the captain?’ ‘No, no,’ says I, ‘let the poor man sleep,’ and next moment bang she went up on top of the reef, and now they’re trying to lay the blame on me.”

I took the old man into a nearby hotel to cheer him up. I don’t know how the inquiry into the loss of the Lizzie Taylor went, as I left New Zealand again, but shortly after that old Captain Alexander sailed for that far off port from where there is no return. “ Over eighty, and that’s enough,” he had said, and with his final statement I fully agreed, for a man over eighty years of age should have had an easier time in his old age than having to go as mate of an Island-trading ketch.

I remember too, old Mr Stansfield, who was first mate in the barquentine Neptune at one time. He also had lived through the China Clipper days and had sailed in several of them of which he spoke with deep admiration.

“ Ah lad, they were ships,” he would say as he paced up and down our little poop deck during his watch on deck. Poor old chap, he had lost all his dash and go by the time he joined the Neptune. I remember on one occasion during a flat calm in the

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middle of the Tasman Sea. We were rolling our scuppers under with not a breath of wind to fill our sails, the wheel was kicking frightfully at times, and I, whose trick it was, had just to let it spin at odd intervals.

“ Give me hold of her, boy. I’ll show you how to hold her,” said old Mr Stansfield. I turned the wheel over to him and next moment the old chap was flung right across the deck, leaving the wheel spinning more wildly than ever.

“ There was a time when she’d never have done that to me, but I suppose I’m getting old, lad, that’s what it is,” he remarked rather crestfallenly as I resumed my place on the wheel grating again. I felt sorry for the old man, for he was such a splendid old sailorman, and like a lot of others he was finishing up his sea going days in the little windjammers of the intercolonial trade.

Then there was Mr Mcßride, another of the Neptune’s mates, and beloved of all hands. He was one of the most cheery men that I have ever sailed with, and his happy smile and witty sea sayings are as fresh in my memory today as when I sailed with him years ago. When the sailing ships disappeared from the seas, there was lost to us a class of men who, under the most adverse conditions, could get the very best out of the crews that served under them, pumping leaky old wooden vessels every watch, and sticking to them voyage after voyage in spite of their leaky condition.

“In te gall-n-sls !” ; “ Man clew-lines and bunt-lines !” ; “ Upper topsail down-hauls ” ; “Up and make ’em fast boys! ” And so the mate’s orders would be bellowed out, and we would leap to carry them out. There was no hanging back, no slackers in those little vessels. Every man had to be an able seaman in every sense of the word, even as their fathers in the China Clipper days had been, and their forefathers before them right back to Nelson’s time, and aye, even to the days of Drake and Anson.

A painting of the smart little barque Alexander Craig exKatkleen Hilda causes my mind to go back over the years several decades to the time when I joined her in Auckland on February 16, 1906. I joined her as the Kathleen Hilda, but a few days after her name was altered to Alexander Craig. Most sailors are averse to their ship’s name being changed, especially when they are serving in her at the time the change is made, and

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the crew of the Kathleen Hilda were no exception to the rule. It did not seem right somehow that this pretty little barque with an appealing feminine name should be given such a masculine designation. Kathleen Hilda she was always called by the old hands who had served in her under that name.

“ It is not right to change her name, it vos pe most unlucky, is it not? ” said old Martin the Norwegian, our oldest man in the fo’c’sle. “ Not right according to vot you call him gunter,” he added with a solemn shake of his head, when he heard the news. But there it was, the decree had gone forth from the owners, and henceforth the Kathleen Hilda became one of the well-known Craig Line of Auckland.

After cleaning and painting the ship in the old Graving Dock outside the Auckland Sailors’ Home, we hauled her across to what was known in those days as the Hobson Street Wharf, a wooden pier which has since been replaced by the present Princes Wharf. Here we took aboard clay ballast for Hokianga. The old Sailors’ Home still stands on its original site, but gone now is the handy little Graving Dock, so well known to sailor folk of those days, filled in and now a parking place for motor cars. It would make some of the old sailors turn in their graves to see the changes wrought along our once beautiful and historic waterfront. What stories the old Sailors’ Home could tell could it but talk. Here shipwrecked crews from many an ocean tragedy were housed pending their finding new ships, and here too lived many an old sailor who had given up the sea, but who could not finally drag himself away from the sea and ships, and the men who manned them —men like old Charlie Young and Bos’n Bill, and many others who made the Sailors’ Home their abode for years and years in the time of Mr Litde and Charlie Grant, to name two of the then best known managers. Here wild young sailormen, paid off from stately clippers of all nations would take a spell ashore, and the Royal Yard (i.e. the third story) would resound to challenging roars of “ Shenandoah ” or “ Blow the Man Down ” or “ Whisky Johnnie ” until the late hours of night. Here sailors’ mascots were left, and parrots, dogs, cats and even old Billy the goat, were cared for by the ever-changing boarders, though the old Paddy West order of “ Get up Jack and let John sit down,” was never enforced in the

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Auckland Sailors’ Home. A man could come ashore for a spell and stay as long as he felt inclined, within reason, and never be asked to vacate his room for a new arrival.

Farther up the road, however, was a well-known boardinghouse run by an old Irish woman who catered more for the homeward-bounder ashore with his pockets full of money. The story goes of a burly mariner who was always “slow in stays” when it came to getting off to sea again. The old dame believed in the saying that “ a wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse,” and at breakfast time would make a great parade round the dining room, asking of each man whether he would have ham and eggs, steak and eggs, or some other delicacy. When she came to Bill, the oldest boarder, she would always make a point of asking him, “ An phwat’ll ye have me lad, an egg or a sausage ? ”

The few old sailing ship sailors now still living will remember the well-known characters that frequented the Auckland waterfront during the last years of sail. Old Shanghai Johnson was one of the best known. Every morning he was to be seen strolling up and down the lower end of Queen Street keeping a weather eye lifting for any likely looking young sailormen who might be willing to ship away in some New York, London or intercolonial sailer. Old Shanghai would be in clover if requested by some captain loading his ship away up at the Kaipara or Hokianga to hunt up several hands to replace men who had run away. Jagger and Harvey’s ship-chandlery, then situated in lower Queen Street, was his headquarters, and here also, in a special room set aside for captains, would meet most of the masters of sailing ships then in port.

All old salts who had ended their seagoing days in Auckland did not follow Shanghai Johnson’s vocation, however. Some, like old Charlie Young, took up rigging work, while others, seeking a less strenuous occupation, bought handcarts, of which there were quite a number around the waterfront before the advent of motor cars. One hard-case old mariner, whom the younger generation of seamen had nicknamed “ Pump or Sink,” had his handcart gaily decorated with paintings of sailing ships, flags, stars and foul-anchors. Quite a number of these handcarts w ere moored overnight to the Graving Dock fence just outside the Sailors’ Home, and a crowd of young sailormen who were staying

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at the Home could not resist the temptation one night to change all the wheels, which were of odd sizes, on all the handcarts. Pandemonium reigned the following morning as each old salt set off with his handcart in search of work. On some the odd wheels were not noticed, but on others the result was remarkable. Old “ Pump or Sink ” was one of the first away. Hitching a hefty dog to the axle underneath the cart, he picked up the shaft and started off. The cart had a decided list to starboard and kept sheering off that way owing to the starboard or right-hand wheel being much smaller in diameter than the port, or left-hand wheel. Old “ Pump or Sink ” jerked it back on its course, cursed the dog, which was hitched to the axle and doing its best to help the old fellow pull the cart, and proceeded on his way. Suddenly he stopped dead in his tracks as another old mariner raised an uproar about his handcart.

“ You’re a pack of and there’s not a sailorman amongst ye,” old “ Pump or Sink ” shouted at the young seamen seated on the benches outside the Sailors’ Home. The foul epithet would have been unheeded, but the scornful remark of there not being a sailorman amongst them roused the ire of the group of young sailors, who thereupon hurled a stream of invectives at old “ Pump or Sink” as he strove to sort his odd wheel out from among the others.

Tommy the Native was another of Auckland’s odd waterfront characters in those days. When Tommy became tired of going to sea as ship’s cook in the large sailing scows, and having reached the age when he could apply for the old age pension, he became a man of leisure on ten shillings a week. Poor Tommy, who liked his beer above all things, was brought before a magistrate some time later on, to answer to a charge of being drunk and disorderly.

“ And now,” said Tommy, relating this experience to a group of sympathizers, “ they’re trying to take my old age pension from me, the thing I’ve been working hard for all my life.”

Chapter 18

Deep-water Sailing

The little iron barquentine St Kilda had arrived at Sydney from New Zealand timber laden, in the month of May, 1907, and she had encountered one gale of wind after another on the passage across the Tasman Sea. Being only a small vessel of about 150 tons register, life aboard her in bad weather was not all a bed of roses. Her small fo’c’sle was below decks, and right up in the eyes of her beneath the windlass. The scuttle leading down a steep flight of steps into this dingy abode had to be kept closed nearly all the time during bad weather, and the air would become so foul that a candle would not bum. I had joined her on the Kaipara Harbour at one of the numerous sawmills some six or eight months previously, and had just completed a third round voyage in her between Australia and New Zealand. Finally, after battling to and fro against tempestuous seas and strong head winds for over twenty days, we had made the land off Sydney Heads and had had the good fortune to be picked up by one of Brown’s tugs and towed up to Johnston’s Bay where most of the timber ships discharged their cargoes.

“ Are you going back in her next voyage ? ” said one of my shipmates to me that evening of our arrival, as we walked up and down on top of our deckload of sawn timber, yarning over what we intended to do.

“ No,” I answered, “I am not going back in her, Jack. The Old Man is leaving her this trip, I believe, and she may not be as good a ship to sail in under a different master. Besides, the conditions of living aboard this one in that glory hole of a fo’c’sle are not much of an inducement to stay on in her.”

“Well, boys,” said the mate, coming along the deckload towards us as we yarned, “the six months’ articles will be up before the cargo is discharged, so we’ll all have to be at the shipping office at Circular Quay the day after tomorrow to sign off, and those of you who are going back in the ship can sign on again.”

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II AN D A ISLE The Auckland barquentine Honda Isle, built by J. Bigelow and Sons of Auckland. The author served in this vessel under Captain Denison.

ysabel Barquentine Ysabel at sea. Built as Melanesian Mission's Southern Cross, at Auckland, she was afterwards bought by Captain William Ross for the Island trade and renamed Ysabel.

Carnarvon RAY Photograph of most of the crew of Carnarvon Hay who sailed in her when she collided with an iceberg off Cape Horn m April 1908. Photo taken at Portland, Oregon. The author is seated sixth trom lett.

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“As far as we two are concerned, we are not going back in her, sir,” said Jack.

“Not going back in her?” said the mate. “Why, what’s the matter with the ship ? ”

“The ship’s all right,” we both replied, “a good staunch little iron vessel that never needs pumping every watch like some of the old wooden droghers, but it’s that hole of a fo’c’sle that’s sickened us of her.”

“ We’re going to see what we can do about having a house built on deck forrard here to replace that fo’c’sle,” said the mate.

“ It’s about time too,” we replied. “ That place down below forrard is not fit to house a dog and Jack and I are going up to Newcastle to ship away deep-water in one of the big ships with a house on deck to live in.”

The mate seemed to think that it was a crazy thing to do, to ship away in a deep-waterman where, as he put it, we’d sign for the Board of Trade “ pound and pint ” with the final clause of “lime juice and vinegar according to the Act and no grog allowed.” However our minds were made up, and after receiving what pay was coming to us and our discharges from the barquentine St Kilda, we were free agents once more; free to go and pick our next ship and to go to whatever part of the world we wished.

When I look back over the years I think what a carefree, happy-go-lucky life young sailors of the sailing ships lived in those days. Even Johnston’s Bay, where we left the St Kilda, was full of interesting ships at that time and we could have shipped in anything that was lying there had we wished, from the big five-masted fore and aft Yankee timber schooner George E. Billings, or an intercolonial barque bound for Fiji Islands, a Sydney-owned Island schooner bound for New Hebrides, or a tramp steamer sold to Japan and signing on a crew by the run to take her up to Vladivostock. The latter, however, we flatly turned down.

“ Sailors ? ” said Jack to me as the mate of the tramp steamer put the question of our going with him outside the shipping office the day we signed off the St Kilda. “He doesn’t need sailors aboard that heap of scrap iron. A crowd of navvies would be all that’s needed there.”

L

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Old Captain Longwill of the St Kilda gave us some fatherly advice as we parted company. “Go deep-water if you must, boys, but you’d get just as far ahead if you stayed in the intercolonial trade. Your time in these vessels counts as foreigngoing sea time when it comes to handing in your discharge for a Board of Trade examination as second mate. But then it’s the experience in a big ship you’re after, so good-bye and good luck to you, lads.”

We spent our last night in Sydney aboard the ship and next day we got a trip on a small harbour tug to the berth where the Newcastle steamers lay and landed our sea-chests aboard the one that was going up to Newcastle that night. On the way out of Johnston’s Bay in the little tug we passed close to a white-painted yacht that was lying at anchor near the St Kilda. She had a long overhanging bow and counter, and from the sea-battered appearance of her she looked as if she had had a bad time on her last passage.

“ What yacht’s that ? ” we asked the tug-boat skipper as we steamed past her.

“ That one ? ” he replied with a jerk of his thumb. “ Oh, that’s Jack London’s yacht, the Snark. She’s come down from the Solomon Islands or somewhere and Jack London is ashore laid up in hospital, I hear.”

At that time Jack London’s name was on every one’s lips as a popular author and I looked with renewed interest on the little craft which later on became so well known to all who have read The Cruise of the Snark.

After seeing our sea-chests safely aboard the Newcastle boat, Jack and I met the rest of the crew of the St Kilda in a quiet private bar in George Street. There were two other able seamen and an ordinary seaman and together we drank success to one another’s coming voyages wherever they might take us. Old Tom Andrews, one of our A.B.s, was a real blue water, squarerigged sailing ship man. He hailed from Poplar, London, and in his time had sailed in some fine clipper ships.

“ You’re doing the right thing, boys,” he said to Jack and me. “ Serve for a while in big deep-water ships and then when you get your tickets you’ll never regret the experience you’ve had.” We parted with handshakes and good wishes all round and that

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night Jack and I put in a long watch below while the steamer ploughed her way north to Newcastle.

On landing next morning we made our way along Hunter Street to the Post Office Hotel, whose proprietor we knew. George kept a good house ably assisted by his wife and several daughters, the table was good and the rooms clean and natty. Many of the visiting captains of the big deep-watermen were known to George and it was here that we met one of the finest ship masters I have ever sailed with, Captain William Griffiths of the full-rigged ship Carnarvon Bay of Liverpool. George introduced us to the captain who at once agreed to sign us on right away after he had looked over our discharges.

“Where are you bound, sir?” I asked the Captain as he handed me my papers back.

“ I am bound for Valparaiso and as far as I know now it will be back to Sydney for orders.”

“ Well, could we sign on to be paid off in Sydney should the ship return to Australia, captain ? ”

“ Why yes, my lad, I’ll have that clause inserted against your names on the Articles,” said Captain Griffiths. “Of course, we may not return to Australia this voyage. Would you be prepared to stay with me in that case ? ”

“ Yes, sir,” we both answered.

“ Then be at the shipping office at ten o’clock tomorrow morning and I will sign you on.”

“ Thank you, sir,” we said, and our problem of finding a ship had ended.

There were four or five men waiting at the shipping office when we got there next morning, and among them was a young ordinary seaman who had been with us in the St Kilda on a previous voyage.

“ Hullo, Bill,” we called out as we met. “ What ship are you joining? ”

“ Well,” said Bill, “ I heard that you and Jack are signing on in the Carnarvon Bay this morning, so I thought I’d just come round and see if the Old Man was needing an extra man.”

“Who are those other fellows, Bill? Are they going in the Carnarvon Bay too ? ” we asked.

No,” replied Bill, “two of them are joining the four-masted

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barque Marion Josiah, and the two Dutchmen there are waiting to sign on in the German four-masted barque Listbeth."

" Here comes Captain Griffiths now," said Jack and turning round we came face to face with the captain.

“Well here you are, men; we’ll go right in now and sign the Articles,” he said.

“ Are you needing another man to go in the ship, captain ? ” I asked.

“Yes, I still want three more able seamen and one 0.5.,” he replied.

“Well, this young fellow would like to join with us,” I said, introducing Bill.

“ Have you your last discharge with you, lad ? ” asked Captain Griffiths. Bill produced his last discharge as O.S. from the barque Manurewa.

“Ordinary seaman, eh?” queried the captain. “How long have you been at sea, boy ? ”

“ A little over three years, sir,” replied Bill

“ How old are you ? ”

“ Nineteen,” said Bill.

“ Come along in then, I will take you as able seaman,” said Captain Griffiths, to Bill’s great delight, and within a few moments we were all duly signed on as able seamen, to make the voyage in the full-rigged ship Carnarvon Bay to Valparaiso and thence back to Sydney for orders, or failing the latter, to be paid off on the ship’s arrival in the United Kingdom, or between the Elbe or Brest. The wages were £4 per month, and instead of our intercolonial scale of provision of “sufficient without waste ” we would now be on the bare Board of Trade allowance, known to all old-time sailors as the “ Pound and Pint.”

“ Do any of you want an advance ? ” the captain asked as we left the shipping office, but we all replied in the negative, as we were still in funds, having just been paid off a few days before.

“ I want you three men to report on board the ship tomorrow morning at eight o’clock. She is lying alongside the Dyke loading coal. Ask for Mr Thomas, the mate; I have already told him about you. That is all, men.”

With this parting injunction Captain Griffiths left us and we all strolled along to the Post Office Hotel to pack our gear. Young

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Bill was delighted at his sudden and unexpected promotion to able seaman and we all agreed that Captain Griffiths seemed to be a very fine man. Often when I have been reading a sea book I have been surprised at the number of hard, unrelenting and bullying shipmasters there must have been knocking around the seven seas in the days of sailing ships. I don’t know whether I have been more fortunate than most of these writers, but looking back over the years I spent in sail I have to admit that I have never sailed with a master of that type. The same thing applies to the mates and fellow shipmates I have had in the fo’c’sle. Some of the staunchest friends that I have made on my way through life, have been made through being shipmates with those same men at sea.

During that last day ashore in Newcastle we strolled around the waterfront and viewed the shipping, either on the buoys in the midstream or alongside the Dyke at the loading berths. Some fine looking ships were there too. At the farewell buoys down near the entrance to the harbour lay the two large four-masted barques previously mentioned, the British Marion Josiah and the German Listbeth. The British full-rigged ship Kensington was alongside the Dyke loading. She was a beautiful looking ship with painted ports along her sides and she crossed a main skysail yard above her royal and double te-gallant sails. The fourmasted barque Silberhorn was there too at the loading berth. Both these fine ship sailed about that time never to return. There was talk of them having been burnt at sea through their cargoes of coal catching fire. The Kensington was one of the ship we very nearly decided to go in; it was only the fact of meeting Captain Griffiths first that we did not do so. As we were walking along Hunter Street later on in the day I ran into old Mr Boreham who had been mate of the barque Northern Chief when I had sailed in her. He tried to dissuade me from going in the Carnarvon Bay, but when he found that I had signed on he desisted and invited us all in for a farewell drink at the Clarendon Hotel.

“ I wanted you to come along with me in the barque Mennock,” he said. “ I could have got you the second mate’s job there, too,” he went on. At that time ships under a certain registered tonnage could go to sea without a certificated second

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mate from Australia. I told Mr Boreham that I hoped eventually to reach London, where I intended to go to a navigation school before I sat for a second mate’s certificate. He agreed that that would be the best idea. “ Even if you did come with me in the Mennock,” he said, “your time would not count any more than that of an able seaman, so you’d best go for your ticket, lad.”

Clarendon Hotel at Newcastle in those days had a world-wide reputation as a sailing ship sailors’ hostel. The proprietress, known to all and sundry as Nellie of the Clarendon, was an authority on sailing ships and sailors, and many a young sailor had gone into the Clarendon just to hear Nellie ring off a string of deep-water sailing ship vocabulary. Glancing along the bar at Nellie’s clientele ranged up in double rows waiting to be served, I was impressed by the remarkable variety of characters assembled there. Here in a small group on their own were several garrulous and gesticulating Frenchmen from one of R. D. Bordes’ big four-masted barques, while pressed close up against them were a couple of vivacious Italians engaged in a most animated conversation. Nearby towered a gigantic Southern States negro, surrounded by several of his own countrymen. I heard that he was port watch bos’n of a three skysail yarder full-rigged American ship, which had the reputation of carrying the best shanty-men in Newcastle at that time. Germans, Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, Danes, and Dutch seamen were all represented, along with British and American seamen in the Newcastle waterfront public houses in those days of sailing ships. On Saturday nights Hunter Street would have had as cosmopolitan a crowd surging up and down it as any street in any sea-port of the world.

The day we joined the Carnarvon Bay it was blowing and raining from the south-east. The ship was taking in her last few truck-loads of coal cargo and what with the rain and the coal-dust she presented a pretty miserable looking appearance.

“ Put your sea-chests in the port fo’c’sle,” said the mate to us as we landed aboard with our gear. “ You’ll all be in my watch and when you get into working togs, come aft and report to me.” It did not take long to pick our bunks and find a place for our sea-chests and then we went along to where the mate and second mate stood talking by the break of the poop.

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“ Oh, here you are, boys, well there’s a lot of squaring up to be done and not many men to do it as yet. Get a marline spike and go up on to the main yard there and splice the wire pennants into the ends of the lower topsail chain sheets,” said the mate to me, and sending Jack and Bill away on other different jobs aloft, we were all soon busily engaged on different tasks.

“Take this fellow with you,” the mate called out to me indicating a young German. “He can’t speak much English but he can lend you a hand and being a square-head he’s probably a fairly good sailorman.”

“Aye aye, sir,” I said, and beckoning the young German to come with me we made our way aloft with our working gear. We were not long on the job before I realized that the fact of my mate being a square-head did not altogether qualify him to ship as an able seaman in a sailing ship. However, we struggled along with the two heavy wire-splices as best we could. The young German was just about useless as a workmate. I tried to gather from his conversation what ship he had left, but the only answer I could get was that he was really a tram-driver by calling and did not know much about ships and the sea.

“No, me” patting himself vigorously on the chest. “No sailor.”

"No, I see that," I answered. "You leave ship here in Australia ? " I asked him.

" Me come Melbourne in steamer," he replied,

"Where from?" I asked.

" My home Hamburg."

" Well how the devil you get here to Newcastle ? "

" I come here by ship, by what you say ' the run.' "

"Oh, you came by the run from Melbourne to Newcastle?"

“ Ja, ja,” he responded, his face all smiles when he saw that at last I understood. I finally learnt that he had come up from Newcastle in the ship Arctic Stream by the run, and was now, he told me, on his way to San Francisco to join his sister there. As the Arctic Stream had only been three or four days coming up the coast from Melbourne, that would have been the only sea experience the young German would have had in a sailing ship. But some Newcastle boarding-master had shanghaied him off in the Carnarvon Bay as a fully qualified able seaman, and

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had got most of the four pounds advanced to him into the bargain. In taking a ship ‘by the run ’ from port to port a seaman would receive a lump sum for the trip instead of the usual monthly wage. If the passage turned out to be one of short duration, then the men were lucky, but if through head winds or calms it turned out to be a long trip, then men going by the run in a ship would often be underpaid for the trip. Also, on a short trip by the run, a hobo, or stiff, would have a better chance of not being found out if he were not called on to take a trick at the wheel, or sent aloft, and nobody would be any the wiser as to whether he were a real sailorman.

However the Carnarvon Bay had not been long at sea before the young German was chased away from the wheel and reduced to boy on the Articles for being unable to steer. We lay for a day or so at the farewell buoy after the loading was completed, clearing up generally, bending sails, and all the hundred-and-one jobs that go to make a big windjammer ready for sea. The Carnarvon Bay was a full-rigged ship just on 1,800 tons register. She was what was known at that time as a jubilee rigged ship, that is instead of carrying te-gallant sails and royals above her double topsails, she carried double te-gallant sails only above the upper topsail yard, and no royals at all. Some sailing ship sailors argued that it was a more handy rig than a ship that carried royals, but I do not think that it lessened the work much when it came to shortening sail. The te-gallant sails in the Carnarvon Bay were all very heavy sails, being both deep and square, and it took more men aloft to furl them than it would to furl the lighter royals. The only thing that I could see where the advantage lay in a stump-te-gallant rigged ship was that her standing rigging would be heavier and stronger right to her mastheads, and that a hard driving, sail-carrying master could hang on to the upper canvas longer. Of course we three who had just come out of small vessels in the intercolonial trade took a good while to get used to a big heavily rigged ship.

I remember once when we were changing the square sails on the fore in the little barquentine St Kilda, a big raw-boned Highlander we had in our crew just slung the fore-royal over his shoulder and climbed up aloft with it and slung it over the weather quarter of the royal yard as if it had been a handker-

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chief. To bend an upper te-gallant sail in the Carnarvon Bay required a good two and a half inch manila gantline to send it aloft and several men to do the job.

The day we took our departure from Newcastle the wind blew strong out of the sou-west, and a real winter’s day in the month of June. One of Brown’s tugs was ordered for midaftemoon, but it was getting on towards evening before she came out to us to take our tow-rope. The reason was that several of our crew were still being rounded up among the waterfront pubs of Newcasde. The police launch brought them off at odd intervals all day long. Some were men who had cleared out when the ship had arrived from the west coast of South America and who had been picked up by the police, and others were like the young German, shanghaied aboard by boardingmasters and well under the influence of strong liquor.

“ Stand by to take tug-boat’s lines,” shouted the mate as she came up alongside with a full head of steam blowing off and creating a great din which drowned all other sounds. A Newcastle pilot stood by the Old Man at the break of the poop aft, and presently he roared out “Go ahead with the tug.” A few moments later he followed up his first order with “Stand by your slip-line, mister,” and then, as the tug got the weight on the tow-rope, “ Let go, sir.”

“ Let go it is,” called the mate, and with a splash the wire hawser which had been rove through a ring on the buoy, dropped into the water as it was hauled quickly aboard.

“ A hand aft to the wheel,” roared the pilot.

“Slip aft and take the wheel, Eaddy,” said the mate to me as he bustled round the fo’c’sle head superintending the getting in of the hawser. I ducked into the fo’c’sle and donned a heavy 1 double-breasted coat and then ran along aft to the wheel. The ship was just beginning to gather way, and as I gripped the spokes the pilot came aft by the wheel leaving the Old Man standing by the rail at the break of the poop.

“ Starboard a little,” he said turning to me.

“Starboard it is, sir,” I replied.

“Steadyee,” he drawled a few moments later.

“Steady, sir,” I replied, and the big ship straightened up in the wake of the tug. Now we were off heading down towards

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the bar and the open sea. Piled up on the rocks going out lay the wreck of a once fine French sailing ship, while on the starboard or southern side of the entrance rose the round knoll or hillock known as the Knobbys, on the top of which flew a hoist of signal flags from a tall white-painted flagstaff.

The scene on deck and aloft was one of animated activity. Topsails and te-gallant sails were being loosed, aud caught hold of by the strong following wind, were bellying out fore-part of the yards like great half-filled balloons straining to break free. Men were running from pin-rails and fife-rails, throwing down coils of running gear and clearing it ready for hoisting away on topsail and te-gallant halliards when the orders were given. As we reached the bar and met the ocean swell the bows commenced to rise and fall and a new life in the ship became perceptible. A sense of what might be demanded of her strong hull and staunch array of masts, yards, sails and rigging on her long traverse across one of the old ocean’s stormy stretches seemed to pervade the whole fabric. As the topsails were sheeted home and hoisted we surged along before the ever increasing souwesterly wind, at times slacking up on the tow-rope to such an extent that the tug-master kept glancing apprehensively astern. At last came the order to let go the tow-line, and while a dozen or so men toiled laboriously hauling the long steel wire hawser aboard, the tug circled round the ship and edged in close enough for the pilot to jump into her boat.

“ Goodbye, pilot,” “ Good-bye, captain,” was flung from ship to ship, and sheering off, the tug blew three long blasts on the whistle as a final farewell and headed back to port. Looking momentarily astern I saw that a four-masted barque and another full-rigged ship were following us out over the bar behind their respective tug-boats, and down to leeward a great rust-streaked four-masted barque in ballast was heading inwards with a pilot steamer in close attendance. She would be from the west coast of South America or ’Frisco in ballast, I surmised.

The captain walked up to the binnacle in front of the wheel and after glancing at the compass for a few moments he turned to me and said, “ Keep her east half south.”

“ East half south, sir,” I replied as I let her head come up half a point. Sail after sail was now crowded on to the ship

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and as the gathering night came down the watches were picked by the mates and I was eventually relieved from the wheel. Going forrard to the fo’c’sle I found that apart from the food we were served with, the routine aboard a deep-waterman was the same as was observed aboard our own intercolonial sailing vessels. Four hours on and four hours off for both watches, with the two dog-watches from four to six, and six to eight in the evening were the rule, though in bad weather it was often a case of “ All hands on deck to shorten sail! ” It was always “ growl you may but go you must,” but we realized that it was far better to work together agreeably with the mates who, after all, had to work just as hard or harder than any one else, with responsibility added. Taking everything into consideration, the Carnarvon Bay’s crew were a fairly capable crowd of seamen. Like most deep-watermen, we had a few ‘ stiffs,’ as sailors termed useless members among our complement, as for instance the young German I had previously mentioned. Then there was a very old seaman named Belcher who confessed to having turned 80, he was never called in the night watches. During the daytime he just pottered around the decks doing little odd jobs of fancy work, such as making round canvas tops for the two harness casks one on each side at the break of the poop. He finished them off with beautiful drawn-thread work fringes round the lower edges, and painted the same fringes in different colours. He had been a splendid seaman in his time and could talk of China clippers, and fast sailing colonial passenger vessels by the dozen. Poor old Belcher, he was one whom the Captain had sent home from Valparaiso as a distressed British seaman.

Then there was an old Scottish seaman in our watch who never turned out of his bunk once on the passage across to Valparaiso. He also was sent home as a D.B.S. This old chap, Kerr, I think his name was, told me that he was over seventy years of age, and that he had been at sea since he was twelve years old. What tales he and old Belcher could have told had they been in the right environment: but here in a big deep-laden ship running her easting down below forty south in the month of July, with the main deck constantly filled from rail to rail with rushing swirling seas was no place to sit and have a quiet yam of old times.

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We lost the services of another good man about a week out from Newcastle. He was flung across the main deck while the watch were hauling on the weather braces and fetched up across a bulwarks stanchion. We had to pick him up and carry him below to a spare cabin aft. The captain pronounced two or three broken ribs and other internal injuries, and Hargreaves was laid up for the rest of that voyage. Every man off duty in a sailing ship made it harder for those left to carry on. There have been cases of able-bodied men malingering for weeks at a time, especially in bad weather, but I have only been shipmates on two or three occasions with men of this breed, and am sure it was not worth putting up with all the abuse and scorn of their shipmates.

I have often marvelled at the sheer determination and tenacity of purpose shown by most of those sailormen of the days of sail. The captains drove their ship® mercilessly at times, but it was the men forrard, the able seamen and ordinary seamen, high aloft on the wildly swinging yards, with a howling gale blowing accompanied by driving sleet and snowstorms, who fought with hard bellying canvas for hours at a time in order to secure safely to the yards after it had been clewed up. Their foothold was a very precarious one on a single steel wire rope stretched from the midships section of the yard to the yard-arm on either side. Standing on this insecure foothold, with the dark foam-crested sea rushing past eighty, ninety, or a hundred feet below, these men fought out many a grim battle with a wildly jumping clewed-up topsail or te-gallant sail, more often than not in the pitch black darkness of a cold sleet or snowstorm, with only the flashes of lightning or balls of St Elmo’s fire to illuminate their task.

Those were the days when sailormen before the mast in sailing ships were known to shore-going folk as common sailors. Common sailors indeed, many men have come through four or five years of this life still to find time to leam navigation, and later on in life hold responsible positions as masters and mates of some of the world’s largest liners. It was not always the brassbounders, as the indenture apprentices in the half-deck were known, who eventually became good masters or mates. Many a man who crawled up through the hawse-pipes got there also.

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It took the Carnarvon Bay forty-five days to make the passage across from Newcastle, N.S.W. to Valparaiso on this voyage. The German barque Listbeth beat her by five or six days, but it was still a good passage for a ship of the Carnarvon Bay’s stamp. She was built primarily for carrying cargo, and speed was a secondary consideration when her lines were laid down. The coal cargo was discharged into lighters at Valparaiso as, like all sailing ships visiting this port at this time, the Carnarvon Bay had to lie out in the bay moored fore and aft to buoys in the tiers of ships, and there were ships in Valparaiso in those days. Sailing ships of all sizes and nationalities, from the large fivemasted full-rigged German ship Preussen, and her comrade-in-arms the five-masted barque Potosie, of the famous P Line of Hamburg, down to the little barques like our own intercolonial ships.

One I remember, the little barque Blue-bell, about the size of one of J. J. Craig’s barques of Auckland, a pretty little ship with a pretty-sounding name. Next to us in the tiers was the fullrigged ship Glenalvon, a ship very similar in build and rig to the Carnarvon Bay. On the other side of us was an old iron barque called the Sussex ; she also was one of the smaller deep-water-men lying there at that time. Farther along was the four-masted barque Thistlebank, and the ships Senator, and Lind field. While the coal was being discharged we sent our main upp>er topsail yard down and sent it ashore to be straightened out. During one of the hard gales which had driven us across the Southern Pacific, this yard had buckled round at nearly right angles from the quarter of the yard. It just goes to show what the force of the wind can do to a great steel spar.

The day after we arrived in Valparaiso Bay the mail came off, and great was the excitement and expectation as the mate handed out our letters. The first that I opened was from my home back in Auckland and in it was the news that our fine little sailing yacht Moa was sold. I felt a little bit depressed to think that I would never be able to go cruising around the Hauraki Gulf again in her, and feel the grip of her long tiller as we beat up the Rangitoto Channel against the fresh sou-west breeze. But there it was, and that phase of my life must now pass astern and other activities take its place. Among my letters was a

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picture post card from one of the girls in the Post Office Hotel, Newcastle. It was just a plain card with an Australian gum leaf glued on to it and on the leaf were the words:

All over Australia the gum trees are found,

Towering sublime o’er the track.

Your heart will be stirred by the leaf I’ll be bound,

You’ll think of the rugged old trees tall and sound,

Fit friends for the Bushy out back.

Then I remembered how we used to sit and yam in the bar parlour over the days when I and my mates carried the swag from Chillagoe in North Queensland out to the tin fields at Flaggy Creek, and of the long tramp back to the coast, dead broke and hungry. I took the gum leaf post card as a reminder that friends in Australia were still wishing us well wherever we fared. Sailors of the sailing ship days were like that at times, “ one foot on sea the other on shore.”

While in Valparaiso our ship’s company was challenged to a game of Rugby football by the crew of the Thistlebank. We were given a day’s liberty ashore and played the game at a place along the other end of the Bay called Vina-Del-Mar. Our ship won the game, as we had quite a few Welshmen aboard who had played the game as boys and were still good Rugby players. I was only ashore twice while the ship lay at Valparaiso. Once it was the day’s liberty we got when we played the game of football, and the next time another R.N.R. seaman and myself had to go ashore and report to the British Consul as to our whereabouts and future movements. When the last of the coal was discharged we commenced taking in sand ballast. Later on the orders came out to us to proceed to Portland, Oregon, to load wheat for the United Kingdom.

With a thousand tons of sand ballast in her lower hold, the Carnarvon Bay sailed one morning with a fine fair wind and that night we were out of sight of land, once more bound across the line for Astoria Bar. Several changes had been made in our crew at Valparaiso. Old Belcher and Kerr had both been paid off and sent home by steamer. Hargreaves, the man who had met with injuries on the way over from Newcastle, had been left behind in hospital. Two or three others, including the young German, had cleared out, and their places had been taken by

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new hands who had been hustled aboard at the last minute, some in practically what they stood in, as they were from some sailors’ boarding-house. Valparaiso at the time had one well-known boarding-house master known as Nigger Thompson, and it was from his house that some of our new men came. One in particular had been in trouble over a shooting incident that had taken place aboard a British ship that was lying at the buoys while we were there. She was discharging lumber from Vancouver, and this young fellow, an American from one of the Inland States, told us that on the passage down to Valparaiso a huge Russian-Finn had terrorized the whole crew, including the captain, an old man in his seventies. One night the big RussianFinn came aboard well under the influence of pisco, the native gin, that is sold there. After some argument he produced a blade razor and came along the fo’c’sle to attack the young American and his mate. In his own way the young American told us of the part that he had played.

“ Stop where you are or I’ll drop you,” said the Yank.

“ Jou vos not drop me jou jankee b said the big Finn, still advancing and threatening with his razor. Another step or two forward were the last that the Finn made, for the young American put three or four bullets into him, and he dropped on to the floor of the fo’c’sle as dead as a doornail. The young fellow then went aft and explained the whole affair to the old captain. He was taken ashore, and after a trial, where he was defended by the American Consul, he was discharged as having acted in self-defence, and had then shipped with us for Portland, Oregon. He was no sailor, but he was a very fine young fellow all the same and got on well with all hands.

A few days after leaving our last port, we passed close by the island of Juan Fernandez, which is regarded by most people as being the scene of Robinson Crusoe’s exile. Viewed from several miles off it does not look at all like the tropical island upon which Alexander Selkirk, the original of Robinson Crusoe, is supposed to have spent his lonely four years. Soon after passing Juan Fernandez and the island of St Felix, the Carnarvon Bay picked up the south-east trade winds, and for days on end we reeled off the sea miles on our way north. The weather was wonderfully fine, so nearly all hands went to work as day men, cleaning out

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and painting the lower holds and ’tween-decks. All the hatches were lifted off, and working down below in the big cool hold with the tropical sunlight pouring down was rather pleasant, especially as we approached the Equator and met the really hot weather. Only a skeleton crew of apprentices and boys worked the watches at night until we reached the Doldrums, where we all went watch and watch again as we pulley-hauled the yards through the flukey winds and tropical squalls of crossing-the-line weather.

With steady north-east trades and then strong westerly winds the Carnarvon Bay made Astoria bar at the mouth of the Columbia River forty-odd days out from Valparaiso. As we drew in towards the land we sighted a sail astern which proved to be the British full-rigged ship Windsor Park. We had been together in Newcastle, and at Valparaiso, and here we were again meeting like old friends off Astoria bar. A big sea-going Yankee tug came out to us, and after a bit of bargaining between her master and our skipper as she surged along on our lee quarter, she shot ahead to pick up our tow-line. We were tumbling about a good deal in the fairly high sea that was running, but the antics that tug performed as she manoeuvred about, getting our towline aboard, were remarkable to behold. She rolled and pitched to such an extent that it was a wonder any man could keep a footing on her heaving deck; at one moment she would be perched high above us on the top of a huge comber and the next all we could see of her was her funnel belching smoke, and the top of her stumpy mast. At last, however, we were securely fast, and off we went in the wake of the tug, heading in for the bar. Astoria bar at the mouth of the great Columbia River has a bad name all round the world, but after experiences I have had on the Kaipara Bar on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand, I should say that there is not much to pick and choose between them. Both are nasty entrances, especially for sailing ships. I was surprised at the magnitude of this great river once we were inside, the mighty waterway being navigable for hundreds of miles inland.

All the way up to Portland, Oregon, where we were towed by a huge stemwheeler, the scenes on both banks were full of interest. We passed sawmill after sawmill at which lumber schooners were busily loading great cargoes of sawn timber and

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piling deckloads on to them that seemed to reach a third of the way up their rigging.

“ What do you think of this for a timber country ? ” said the first mate to me as we passed a large sawmill that seemed dwarfed into insignificance by the towering ranges of fir clad hills behind it. “ Have you got the like of this in your little New Zealand ? ” he asked.

“ No, sir, not on such a large scale anyhow, though we have sent a lot of timber out of the Kaipara Harbour,” I replied.

“ They tell me that before many more years go by your kauri pine will be all worked out,” continued the mate. “What will you do for timber then ? ”

I told him that New Zealand would still have a lot of useful timber left, such as rimu, totara and birch. He did not seem to be very much impressed by my little country’s potential wealth in timber though.

Our first task on arrival alongside the wharves at Portland was to discharge our thousand tons of ballast, and then a shore gang of workers came aboard and lined the whole of the holds out with thin planking covered all over with scrim. Then the ship was ready to take in her cargo of wheat, which came aboard bagged up. Stevedores stowed the cargo, every tenth bag being split open and its contents poured out into the crevices between the bags. When the loading was completed we hauled across the river to make room for another ship at the loading berth. Portland, Oregon, in 1907 was much frequented by sailing ships which had come to load wheat cargoes for all ports of the world. I remember some fine ships there, among them the ships Rajore, and Port Patrick, and the French ship Saint Mirren, and many more whose names have now slipped my memory.

Once again some of our crew yielded to the blandishments of the garrulous boarding-house runners, and cleared out bag and baggage to make fabulous fortunes aboard bald-headed Yankee steam schooners. Others were hustled aboard at the last minute by the same runners, so the boarding-house masters did all right out of the change round, if nobody else did. Out of half-a-dozen shipped in this manner two were hoboes, or stiffs, who had never been to sea before, and the others were bona fide seamen, dupes of the boarding-house masters. There was a very good Sea-

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men’s Institute at Portland, and besides giving the crews of the out-going ships a real good send off and tea at the Institute the night before we towed down-river, they also sent a small tug down to Astoria loaded with seasonable gifts, as it was Christmas time. Knitted woollen mufflers, balaclava caps, jerseys, fleecylined leather gloves and mittens, warm socks, to say nothing of tobacco, chocolate, condensed milk and the like, were unpacked and handed round by the Seamen’s Institute people that Christmas Eve as we lay at Astoria. It was snowing and blowing most of the time we lay at anchor waiting our chance to tow out over the bar. At midnight on New Year’s Eve all hands went off and sang “ For he’s a jolly good fellow,” which had the desired effect of bringing the Old Man on deck and giving orders to the steward to serve out grog to the ship’s company.

“ Here’s to a fast passage Home,” someone called out, and amid New Year’s greetings all round we all were soon turned in and asleep.

As I walked the deck for an hour in the early morning, keeping anchor watch, my thoughts went back to Auckland and the beautiful summer weather they would be enjoying there at this season of the year. Once again I called to mind the cruises we had made as boys around the beautiful Hauraki Gulf, as looking out over the rail I viewed the dark hulls and towering masts and yards of other big deep-watermen lying at anchor near us. All had the long ocean voyage down the full length of the Pacific and up through the Atlantic ahead of them.

“ Round the Horn and Home again, that’s the sailor’s way,” I said to myself, “ but for preference give me the South Sea Islands or the intercolonial trade.” Our orders were for Queenstown or Falmouth, and on the day after New Year’s Day a big ocean-going tug came down-river to take us to sea.

“ All hands man the capstan! ” called the mate as the tug came alongside. Trooping up on to the fo’c’sle-head, we shipped the heavy capstan bars, and to the tune of that old favourite “ Rolling Home to Merry England ”

" Call all hands to man the capstan,

See your cable is all clear,

For the first thing in the morning.

For Old England we will steer,”

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we tramped around heaving away with a right good will, for we all knew that at the end of this voyage we would all be paid off and free to do as we wished once more. There was plenty of time to observe one’s shipmates whilst heaving in the long length of cable. There was no rush and tear like getting a small vessel under way, with only two or three hands to do the work. We all trudged around steadily, while every now and then one of the older hands would strike up a different song with a rousing chorus, such as “Oh Shenandoah I love your daughter,” or “Sally Brown, you’re a gay old lady, Way Hey roll and go! ”

Round the capstan were men of half-a-dozen or more nationalities, though British predominated. The first mate was a young Welshman who had served his time in the ship, a tall upstanding young man, with a pleasing personality and a first rate seaman. The second mate was a young man from Dublin and a favourite with all hands, also a good seaman. We carried four apprentices who all hailed from different parts of Wales and all were second or third voyagers. Forrard were several Scandinavians, a couple of Germans, and the rest British from the old country, with a few colonials from Australia and New Zealand. Captain Griffiths was a typical British shipmaster whom every one aboard respected, for in him we had a thorough seaman and navigator. He had worked his way up from small Welsh schooners to the position of part-owner and master of a big deep-water sailing ship and with it all he was one of nature’s gentlemen, tolerant and understanding, and in an emergency the right man in the right place.

With the anchor up at the hawsepipe and the tug ahead on a long tow-rope we surged along down-river towards the bar. Being in the mate’s watch, I was on the fo’c’sle-head securing the anchors before we reached the bar, and very soon we once more felt the heaving decks under our feet as we met the incoming seas. The tug gave us a good offing as the wind was in from the west with a fairly high sea running, and it was well on in the afternoon when we were cast off and left to go our own way. With all sail on her, the Carnarvon Bay went off on the starboard tack with the yards just off the backstays and heading south.

And so started our long voyage home round Cape Horn. At

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first strong westerly winds, accompanied at times with driving rainstorms, with the ship plunging bows under into heavy seas as we made out off the land, then the north-east trades blowing steady and strong and bustling the heavy-laden ship down towards the fine once more, and then the soul-wearying process of working through the Doldrums, hauling the heavy yards round, first this way, then that way, with hands cracked and sore from the constant pulling on braces, and then down through the South Pacific with the south-east trades and flying fish weather.

As I was taking my trick at the wheel between four o’clock and six one fine morning, the mate came along and remarked, “We should sight land in the forenoon watch, the Old Man is making a call at Pitcairn Island, I believe.”

“Fm glad of that, sir,” I answered. “ I’ve always wanted to see Pitcairn Island ever since I first read about it in a book called The Lonely Island.”

“ Yes, and we’ll probably be able to get some fresh fruit and a dozen or so fowls to fill that big hen-coop Chips has been making lately. Sec that you have some old clothes or something to exchange with the island people for oranges and bananas.” Later on in the day we sailed in under the lee of the island and backed the main yards, whereupon we were boarded from two big whale-boats by a couple of dozen islanders. They were the most hospitable people I have ever met, and loaded our decks with kits of beautiful oranges and bananas and other tropical fruits, besides curios of all sorts from their island. While we lay off the island that day with these quiet-spoken, friendly people, I found it hard to realize that they were the descendants of the men who had forcibly taken the Bounty and run her ashore on this lovely little South Pacific island. Almost at the same moment as we backed our yards under the lee of Pitcairn, a large blackpainted American barque hove in sight from the opposite side of the island, and lay-to as a boat made off to her. I forget her name now, but in reply to a hoist of flags run up by our ship, an answering string of fluttering bunting from the barque told us that she was from Newcastle, N.S.W., and bound for San Francisco with a coal cargo. What a remote chance it was, when these two ocean wanderers left their respective ports, that they would meet at the same time on the same day at such an infinitesimal spot on the sea’s vast expanse.

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Within the next couple of weeks we were tearing along in the grip of the Roaring Forties and heading south-east for Cape Horn. Now it was a case of that old sailor’s saying, “ Sea boots and oilskins you must have, carpet slippers you don’t want.” Day after day the whole of the main deck was filled from rail to rail as the great grey-beards of seas chased us, overtook us and then crashed aboard from both sides. The only safe way now to go from forrard to aft, or aft to forrard, was by hanging on to the taut life-lines stretched along both sides of the deck. The one redeeming feature of this wild mad career through this turbulent stretch of ocean was that the wind stayed pretty well right aft and, with the yards laid nearly dead square for days on end, there was not so much pulley-hauling on those heavy braces as we had when working through the Doldrums. We had plenty of sail drill, however, for Captain Griffiths was no sluggard when it came to carrying sail and the old ship could stand up to it too. Time and again a great black sleet squall would come charging down on us from astern, travelling at the speed of an express train.

“Stand by your fore and main upper te-gallant halliards,” and a moment afterwards a mighty shout of “ Lower away both ! ” Then when the squall had spent its force it was “ Hoist away again on the upper te-gallant halliards.”

So it went on from day to day as we charged along down towards those cold high latitudes of Cape Horn, and then when one day the wind eased up a trifle, several of us went aloft on the mizzen and sent down the heavy iron standard from under the quarter of the mizzen lower topsail yard. It had been badly buckled by the tremendous downward pull of the lower topsail in one of the hard sleet storms, and though a great heavy piece of round iron about three inches in diameter and eight feet long, it had bent almost at right angles. It was a cold job getting it loose from its fastenings, with the sleet and snow driving down on us from the murky storm wrack astern. Then once we had it on deck, we had to drag it along forrard to the break of the fo’c’sle head, where the carpenter, a huge Aland Islander from the Baltic, had a roaring coal fire going on sheets of iron spread over the sea-washed deck. Here we heated the heavy iron standard and turned it round about as Chips hit it crashing blows

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with a heavy maul. It was a laborious task, halted every now and then by a rush of sea water along the deck as the ship charged down hill from the top of a mighty following sea. Half-a-dozen of us wrestled and fought with that unwieldy length of iron in our endeavour to help the carpenter to straighten it. Yells and curses would come from men on either end of it as they inadvertently grasped it at times too near the middle where it was nearly red hot.

“ Hold it nearer mitt de end vere it is nod so hot. Hold it now, vile I strike it mitt de middle ! ” shouted the burly carpenter, and off we would go again, straining and struggling with the cursed thing on the wet, slippery and heaving deck, like so many gnomes dancing around a red hot fire in a corner of Hades which had been inundated by the icy cold seas of Cape Horn. However we got it straightened out eventually. Sailing ship sailors were nothing if they were not adaptable, and to most of us it was just another job in the day’s work. Getting it aloft again was an easier job than sending it down, and when we finally came down from aloft in the gathering gloom of a Cape Horn afternoon, the mizzen lower topsail yard was back in its rightful position with its sail sheeted home all taut once more.

“ Aft here for grog, you men,” said the mate as we landed on deck, and the steward poured us out a generous “second mate’s four fingers ” each under the break of the poop. It was a gesture from the Old Man that we all much appreciated, and one that showed that he also was pleased with our effort.

We still tore along day and night with flooded decks and straining canvas aloft, followed continuously by towering Cape Horn greybacks. It was now a case of “ the best hands twirling the bucking wheel and not daring to look behind” as one sea poet has it. Each helmsman as he took his trick at the wheel had a lee-wheel man to assist him, and we had to watch the ship’s head as well as the compass, like a cat watching a mouse. In extra heavy seas Captain Griffiths would stand aft near the binnacle and at times would turn round to the helmsman and quietly say, “ Meet her lad, meet her,” if she was inclined to sheer one way or the other. One day in an extra heavy squall with a big sea running he said to me, “ Give me men who have been brought up in little ships, they make the best helmsmen.”

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My mind flew back to years before when I sailed as a lad in the crack sailing scow Vixen, when Jim Biddick, her skipper, had said to me, “ Learn to steer a little vessel in a seamanlike manner and then you’ll always be able to steer a big ship.” They were both thorough seamen in their own class of ship and never asked a man to do what they could not do themselves.

As we passed the rocky group of islands south of the Horn known as the Diego Ramirez, the wind eased up a little and thick fog began to settle down all around us. One afternoon we began to sail through a good deal of drift ice, some of it in lumps as large as a railway truck. Extra look-outs were posted one on each side of the fo’c’sle head, and strict instructions were given for all hands in the watch on deck to keep a good look-out also. The fog horn was kept continually blaring, and many listening ears were on the alert for an answering echo from the cliffs of some unseen iceberg.

Early one morning, a day or so later, with the ship running free with the wind on the port quarter, all hands were startled by the yell of the port look-out man.

“ Ice right ahead, sir! Ice right ahead ! ” followed quickly by, “ Port your helm, sir! Port, port your helm ! ”

That last injunction, and the quick action taken by the first mate in rushing aft to the wheel himself and swinging it hard-a-port, saved the ship from running headlong into the great iceberg which towered up dead ahead of us. The fog was so thick that at first it was hard to discern the height of the iceberg or its extent across our path, and then as we quickly closed up on it we saw a sheer cliff, nebulous and wraithlike, almost indistinguishable through the enveloping fog which eddied and whirled across its face. Higher, and still higher, we looked till at last the uppermost rim of it could be seen above our upper te-gallant yards. As the ship’s head kept sweeping off to starboard with the helm hard-a-port, the port yard-arms took the impact simultaneously. With a mighty crash and tearing away of gear the big fore-yard came down and hung across the starboard rail. The heavy steel spike bowsprit was knocked sideways and upward, carrying away the bobstay, and the port anchor was sent crashing into the flare of the bow and fo’c’sle-head decking, wrecking the carpenter’s shop underneath. The ship came to a

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standstill alongside the iceberg which towered above her in a sheer cliff as perpendicular as the wall of a great building.

At the moment the upper yard-arms crashed into the berg, great blocks of ice were dislodged by the impact and came crashing down on to our decks, some of the heavier ones smashing their way through the deck planking and landing on top of the wheat cargo below. All hands were ordered aft on to the starboard side of the poop to avoid being hit by the falling blocks of ice. The carpenter tore along the decks with his sounding rod and we all waited in a hushed suspense as he sounded the wells.

“ She’s not making any water, sir,” he shouted to the Old Man.

“ Thank God for that,” said the Old Man, and so said we all, though we fully realized the danger of our position. Luckily we had struck the iceberg a glancing blow on the lee side, and the ship now lay in calm water with the wind all taken out of her sails. She lay as quiet and still as though she were in a dock alongside a high block of buildings. All that we could do now was to wait until some errant flaw of wind filled our sails enough to give the ship a little steering way. While we waited for a breeze, all hands turned to to clear away the wreckage forrard. The big fore yard was cut away, and once clear of its gear, it slid quietly over the side and disappeared into the depths of the dark looking sea. The port fore rigging was repaired with lengths of heavy chain shackled in to replace the broken shrouds. The broken bobstay under the big spike bowsprit was lengthened and hove down taut once more, and then after hours of waiting, a light air came along from aft and filled the sails with enough wind to move the ship ahead and away from the berg.

Towards noon the fog lifted and there all around us lay icebergs of all shapes and sizes. The one we had hit was a great hillock of ice about three miles long, and rising towards the point which we had struck to a sheer cliff about one hundred feet or more in height. Ahead and to port lay a long low berg which the mate estimated to be about twelve miles long. To starboard lay a scattered row of smaller bergs with no clear water between them. The weather favoured us, for as the fog cleared away, the sun came out and lit up the whole scene with a dazzling brilliance, and the icebergs in our near vicinity scintillated along

206

DEEP-WATER SAILING

their serrated ridges like hills of marble crowned with diamonds. There was barely enough wind to give the ship steering way. This state of affairs was most unusual at this time of the year and in these latitudes, for the month was April, and the autumn was well advanced, so we spared no effort to repair our damaged gear and hull. The figure-head had disappeared altogether, much to the regret of the Welshmen in our crew, for it had been the exact replica of a Welsh girl wearing the traditional high hat of Wales. Instead of a pretty clipper bow the old ship now looked snub nosed with her buckled in bows. We all realized that we had had a miraculous escape from total loss, and when the Old Man decided to carry on with the voyage instead of going into Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands for repairs, there was no dissension. It was into a sea wholly enclosed by ice, save for the narrow entrance which the fates had allowed us to find in the fog, where we were now sailing, and the only way out was for us to turn round and go out by the same way. This was what Captain Griffiths decided to do, and a day or so later the Carnarvon Bay passed out to the clear water once more.

A large German four-masted barque spoke to us a few hours after we had cleared the ice. She was heading west round Cape Horn.

“Could he be of any assistance?” he asked by a three flag signal flying from his monkey gaff above his spanker. “ Run up our numbers and ask him to report us,” said the Old Man to the second mate, but as our signal was being hoisted, down came the fog again and that was the last that we saw of the four-masted barque Seafarer. Minus our foresail and fore-lowcr-topsail we meandered along with varying winds and courses on our way northward up the whole length of the Atlantic Ocean. Excepting our encounter with the ice, our passage around Cape Horn had been quite uneventful, though in any case the passage from west to east round that God-forsaken headland is not to be compared with the east to west passage. Old Tom King, one of the eldest seamen aboard the ship that voyage, spoke with contempt of rounding the Horn from west to east.

“ To count yourself a real sailorman,” he said to me on one occasion, “ a man has to beat to windward around the Horn seven times before he even has the right to spit to windward.”

207

SAILS BENEATH THE SOUTHERN CROSS

But Old Tom was an ageing man this voyage. It was he who had first sighted the iceberg and that incident seemed to have turned his brain, for whenever he paced the deck in his watch on deck at night, we would notice him gazing up into the zenith trying to count the myriads of stars in the firmament above him, and pity help any unfortunate shipmate who interrupted him in his astronomical calculations, for he would turn round in a fury and demand to be left alone.

Without her foresail and fore-lower-topsail the ship was harder to steer when close hauled in a fresh breeze, but once she reached the south-east trade wind she slipped along pretty well with the wind well aft. It took longer to work her through the Doldrums, though, for she missed the pull of the big foresail in the variable winds of those regions.

One of my mates from the intercolonial ships had a narrow escape from sudden death while we were working through the calms in flukey weather close to the line. He had gone aloft on the mainmast to clear an upper topsail yard footrope by cutting a stop which was holding the footrope to the topmast rigging. As he cut the small rope-yam lashing with his sheath knife, the rigging, which was stretched out like a bow with the weight of the partly braced yard, sprang back, and threw Bill hurtling downwards. He missed the main top and struck the ratlines in the main lower rigging, which luckily bounced him off clear of the rail and right over the side where he hit the water with a mighty splash. The second mate and myself dived over after him and caught him, one on each side, as he came to the surface. The sea was dead calm and the ship had no way on her, so we quickly made him fast to a line which was thrown over by the crowd on deck, and he was soon hauled back aboard again, bleeding profusely from a great gash across the top of his head. He was laid out on deck in a dazed condition, and the Old Man came along from aft with a small medicine chest under his arm. After Bill’s head had been shaved, he sewed the wound up in a manner that would have done credit to a qualified surgeon.

“ Carry him aft and put him in the spare room,” said Captain Griffiths. “He must be kept quiet and cool,” he added, and detailing me to go with Bill and watch him for a few hours, the work of pulley hauling the ship through the Doldrums was

208

DEEP-WATER SAILING

gone on with. We all thought that Bill may have sustained fatal injuries, but it was going to take more than a fall like that to finish him off, for in a little over a week he was back in his own bunk in the fo’c’sle once more and making light of the whole affair.

One incident that I always remember in connection with Bill’s fall was the fact that about five or ten minutes before he fell we had just landed a great brute of a shark on deck, which we had been trying to catch all the morning, as it cruised lazily around in the shadows of the ship’s hull with its mate. I suppose the commotion of Bill’s body striking the water from such a height, and the yells and excitement of getting him aboard again, must have frightened our shark’s mate away altogether as we never saw it again. After one hundred and fifty-four days at sea since we had cleared Astoria bar, we sighted Cape Clear on the south of Ireland and were towed into Queenstown Harbour by a Glasgow tugboat.

It was a beautiful summer day in the month of June when we let go our anchor in Queenstown Harbour among a crowd of ships, most of which we had been in company with on the other side of the world. What fine ships they were too, that men were proud to take to sea in those days. Away over towards Spike Island lay the beautiful four-masted barque Queen Margaret, a queen of the seas in every sense of the word; near her were the two stump te-gallant four-masted barques Duchelburn and Miltonburn. Closer to us was the fine full-rigged ship Celtic Race, and the barque Lady Wolsley, and all around were many more fine ships whose names Ido not now remember. Truly we had let go our anchor in goodly company. Never will I forget the peace and quietness of that first night at anchor after our long voyage round the Horn and home again. The absence of the perpetual motion of a ship at sea, the bare gaunt spars aloft, bereft now of their brave array of straining, bellying sails, the quietness of the sea overside in place of the rushing waters and swirling wake astern —these and hundreds of other impressions passed through my mind as I walked the deck during my turn at anchor watch, that first night in port. One of the apprentices took over the anchor watch from me in the early hours of the morning. Pointing across the harbour to where the green hills

209

SAILS BENEATH THE SOUTHERN CROSS

and valleys were being lit up by the early dawn, he said in a voice filled with excitement and enthusiasm “ Jove, but it’s grand to be home again, isn’t it ? ”

“ Yes, it is good to be home again, that is for you fellows who belong to the Old Country,” I replied.

“ Oh yes, I forgot that you are a New Zealander and that you are still a long way from home,” he answered almost apologetically.

“ Oh, that’s all right,” I answered, and then I told him that I was after all returning to the land of my birth, and would not consider myself to be a stranger in a strange land when I landed in England. How could we of the Antipodes regard the Old Land in any other way than home, when all our lives our parents had always referred to it as such.

After about a fortnight at anchor in Queenstown awaiting orders they came off at last-—to Hamburg to discharge our wheat cargo. A large ocean-going Dutch tug came over from the Hook of Holland, and speeding along in her wake, we passed up through the English Channel and so into the river Elbe. The surveyors would not allow the Carnarvon Bay to sail on this, the last leg of her long voyage as, with no foreyard, she could not carry enough sail on her foremast to enable her to be worked under canvas in narrow waters. My first view of England was Land’s End, and then after passing Eddystone lighthouse, Prawle Point came into view. This headland was the point of departure that our ship, the barque Clyde, had taken on the sixth of February, 1883, and here was I returning to the land my family had sailed from in the month of June in the year 1908, and returning too by sailing ship. Before the Clyde reached New Zealand I had learned to walk while she ran her easting down, and had also had inbred in me that incomprehensible love of the sea which will remain with me while life lasts.

The big ocean-going Dutch tug handed us over to a smaller German tug off Cuxhaven at the mouth of the river Elbe, and she took us up to the large port of Hamburg where the ship was moored, fore and aft in mid-stream. Here we all took our final leave of her, with the exception of the first mate and two or three apprentices. As Board of Trade seamen passengers, the

210

DEEP-WATER SAILING

majority of our crew travelled to London to be paid off at the Wells Street Sailors’ Home Shipping Office.

Before leaving the ship several of us went aft to say good-bye to the first mate, and to those of us who were going to the Navigation School in London he handed us references from Captain Griffiths for the last twelve months of sea service. I still have mine with me, and the concluding words of the captain’s testimonial, “ He is a smart and practical seaman, and he leaves me with my best wishes for his future welfare,” still give me a lot of satisfaction, coming from such a fine shipmaster and seaman as was the master of the ship Carnarvon Bay. So in London we all went our own ways, some to navigation schools, some to their homes in different parts of the United Kingdom, and some off to sea again in outward-bounders. Bill shipped out to the Colonies again in the four-masted barque Loch Broom and I met him again later on in Melbourne. Jack shipped in the Port Jackson, four-masted barque, for Sydney, and so like sailors the world over, we parted and crossed courses again at rare intervals years afterwards.

211

Chapter 19

Conclusion

To any one who has lived through the latter days of sail, it seems hard to realize that at the present time hardly more that a couple of dozen square-rigged sailing ships are still afloat. Very soon now they will have all passed beyond the ken of living memory, but thanks to the late Sir Henry Brett in his book, White Wings, the story of the big sailing ships that brought most of our fathers and forefathers from the Old World to this favoured little country is preserved for future generations. Mr N. R. McKenzie, in his book The Gael Fares Forth, has also perpetuated the memory of those famous shipbuilders and shipmasters, whose ancestors came out in their own ships from Nova Scotia, and settled at Waipu, Whangarei Heads and Omaha. To Mr James Cowan, in his Tales of the Maori Coast, lovers of the maritime history of New Zealand owe a debt of gratitude.

As the years slip astern, and we look over the taffrail at the receding wake of life, we can see once again the roaring ’forties, with a great ship tearing along before the might of the towering greybacks rearing up astern; the waning moon, low down in the western sky, silver and scintillating in an icy setting; the straining canvas, dark with the saturation of flying spume, with the gale shrieking under the foot of the arching foresail, the thunderous roar of the bow-wave, and the ever present weight of the tumbling seas pouring aboard over our rails amidships and flooding the decks fore and aft; the helmsmen, two of them, straining at the massive wheel, and keeping the ship dead before the gale; the captain and mate, oilskin clad and glistening, as they stand at the break of the poop and confer together while they study the behaviour of the ship. And then again those wondrous days and nights in the trade winds, when as Thomas F. Day sings in his “ Trade Winds ” :

CONCLUSION

212

From the deck to the truck I pour all my force

In spanker and jib I am strong; For I make every course to pull like a horse,

And worry the great ship along,

As I fly o'er the blue, I sing to my crew,

Who answer me back with a hail;

I whistle a note as I slip by the throat,

Of the buoyant and bellying sail.

We remember how, as we entered the tropics, we would take our Donkey’s breakfasts (i.e. straw mattresses) out on to the tarpaulin covered hatches, and sleep on deck, and gazing upwards, watch the dark clouds turning into white as they swept across the moon, or, as she heeled down to an extra puff of wind, glance out over the lee rail, and watch the long swell come brimming higher and higher until, with a long white cascade of foam, it flooded inboard filling our lee scuppers with a frothy swirl of waters, to be drained dry a few moments afterwards by the clanging wash ports. High aloft, the dark hollows of canvas, rising in three tall pyramids, swayed gracefully to and fro across the zenith. Then, when at long last land was sighted, how eagerly we would peer over the rail or tear aloft to obtain a better view of its elusive faintness. Those lines, written by a writer whose name I cannot now call to mind, but who must have been a seaman of those days, come again to me ;

Men who have loved the ships they took to sea

Loved the tall masts, the prows that creamed with foam,

Have learned deep in their hearts how it may be

That there are yet more dearer things than home.

The decks they walk, the rigging and the stars,

The clean boards, counted in the watch they keep,

These, and the sunlight on the slippery spars,

Shall haunt them ever, waking and asleep.

At the time of writing these lines it is of interest to know that sailing ships even in these later years have played their part in war time, though their numbers were not very great. Apart from the well-known old deep-water sailing ships still afloat and doing good service under the flags of different nations, many smaller sailing craft have proved very useful in different parts of the world during the last war. Who would have thought that our humble and often much despised New Zealand sailing scow

213

SAILS BENEATH THE SOUTHERN CROSS

would have taken any part at all in a war at sea. Yet when Japan came into the last conflict, and small shallow-draught cargo-carrying vessels were needed for inter-island work north of Australia, quite a number of these handy little vessels were taken over by the Americans, and sent up to the forward areas, where they did yeoman service. Among them were the scows Echo, Haere, Altair, Lena Gladys, Nor-West, and Maggie, and the ketches Will Watch and Miena. These little vessels all went from the New Zealand waters, while from Australia went many more.

Some of New Zealand’s larger yachts also went into naval service, among them being the two large Auckland yachts Golden Hind and Moerewa. Quite a number of small sailing vessels were engaged on war work in the Mediterranean, including barquentines and schooners. Whether sailing ships will disappear altogether in the years ahead is problematical. Fortunately there are some wonderful collections of models of them, going back to the earliest days of sail, in such places as the South Kensington Museum, London, the Royal United Service Museum, Whitehall, and other smaller and scattered collections in various parts of England. Also in the Maritime Museum at Greenwich there are many beautiful paintings and models, depicting the sea life of long ago. The Macpherson collection of naval prints, drawings and books presented by Sir James Caird forms an important part of this collection, which includes a whole host of other interesting and historical relics relating to the sea. Here, too, are the Nelson relics, but apart from paintings of by-gone queens who visited Greenwich, only one other woman is honoured by being represented here among all these sea mementoes, and she is of course Lord Nelson’s Emma, Lady Hamilton.

And of all those old ships again;

I picture them all sail set

Manned by seamen wind abeam

Bound for ports beyone the sunset

Bound away for Fiddler's Green.

And I hear the orders ringing

As the sheets are slackened free,

And I hear the songs they're singing

Bound away for open sea.

Index of Ships

Acacia, barque, 102

Charles G. Rice, barque, 18, 34, 122-3

Acadia, schooner, 47

Active, barque, 96 tJ.L __l ._ O

Chelydra, barque, 16

Adah, schooner, 47-8

Chieftain, brig, 91

Adelaide, steamer, 138

Clan McLeod, barque, 91-2, 98-9

Adieu, brigantine, 103, 114

Clansman, steamer, 13

Advancement, barque, 92, 96

Clara, barque, 16

Agnes Bell, schooner, 52

Clematis, schooner, 47

Agnes Donald, schooner, 44, 47

Clifton, ketch, 46

Ainsdale, ship, 151

Clio, schooner, 36, 47

Albatross, schooner, 48

Clyde, barque, 11—13, 188

Albion, ship, 15

Colonist, schooner, 47

Alcestis, barque, 92, 98

Concordia, barque, 92

...~~.i.i.,, M uv, y*, 31 Aldebaran, barque, 92

Conference, barque, 91

uaiuui.. y,« Alexa, barquentine, 88

Constance Craig, barque, 63, 92, 105

Alexander Craig, barque, 87, 119, 156

Coralie, cutter, 45

County of Anglesea, barque, 93, 121

Alice, barque, 18

County of Ayr, barque, 105

Alice, yacht, 33

Crusader, ship, 17

Alice A. Leigh, barque, 92—3

Cygnet, cutter, 46

Alice Cameron, barque, 84

Cygnet, schooner, 49, 50—7.

nuiA vjauitiuii, UtiiUUC, 04 Altair, aux. scow, 192

Amy Wilson, schooner, 20, 45

Dartford, ship, 93

Dauntless, schooner, 47

Anna Watson, barque, 16

Annie Wilson, schooner, 48-9, 52

Day Dream, barque, 90

Defiance, brigantine, 20, 84-7

Antelope, cutter, 46

Dilpussund, barque, 92, 98

Antiope, barque, 88, 106

Aorangi, liner, 88

Dolphin, cutter, 48

iiuiuilgl, 11111.1, uu Aotea, schooner, 35

Dream, cutter, 45

Drover, brig, 91

Aratapu, brigantine, 20, 104

- uuuljHl, *", 1114 Arawa, schooner, 47

Duchelburn, barque, 187

■UU"'I. , Arctic Stream, ship, 167

Dunblane, barque, 106

nii-in. oiicani, snip, 107 Atlantic, schooner, 52

Dunedin, ship, 17

"~-J 'V..W..VI, J« Auckland, ship, 17, 148

Durham, tug, 65

Awanui, schooner, 35—6

Earl Derby, ship, 149

Echo, aux. scow, ig2

Edward, brig, 91 T?J. ■_ T7 T7--* T_ J!

Bankfields, barque. 92, 100

Edwin Fox, East Indiaman, 98

Barbara Gordon, ship, 16

Bell Brandon, schooner, 47

Eleanor, cutter, 45

m-u ujuiiuuii, aciiucmcr, 47 Bluebell, barque, 173

Eleanor, yawl, 23 cir ]_ --1 -<-

Borealis, brigantine, 45, 48, 87, 94

Elfreda, schooner, 76 171: _u:_

_—_..„, — & „ ~., lfV) vji Breadalbane, barque, 94

Eliza, ship, 15

Britannia, ship, 15, 19

Elizabeth Graham, barque, 91

"" ~> "A'i 'Ji 'if Brunette, barque, 91

Elizabeth Price, brigantine, 104

Ellen, barque, 91 T?ll T • I _ .

Ellen Lewis, barque, 94

Cachalot, barque, 103

, , —, -,., Elsie, cutter, 47

Caledonia, schooner, 48

Elverland, barquentine, 105, 114

Cambria, schooner, 47

Emerald, barque, 92, 105, 119

Camilla, ship, 16

Empreza, barque, 88, 92

——:: —' j,, ti mv Candidate, barque, 57

Enterprise, steamer, 47

Canterbury, ship, 17

Envy, ketch, 36

Carnarvon Bay, ship. 34. 163-9, 17', ■73-6, 179, 185, 188-9

Esk, cutter, 46

Ettie White, cutter, 21, 46 t? • _ -_i '

-/J "> '/if) »"3, iw—if Caroline, cutter. 47

Eunice, schooner, 42

Casablanca, barque, 92, 100

Euphemia, cutter, 46, 57

Celestia, barque, 103, 114

Eurydice, frigate, 97

Celtic Race, ship, 187

Evening Star, cutter, 45-6

" «a».i., amp, iu/ Champion, cutter, 36, 45, 48

Excelsior, aux. scow, 38, 42

*93

SAILS BENEATH THE SOUTHERN CROSS

215

Fairy Queen, ship, 16

Fairy Rock, brig, 91

Falls of Garry, barque, 92

Fancy, brig, 15

Fannie, cutter, 48, 57

Fanny Thornton, schooner, 49-57

Farningham, ship, 19

Faun, cutter, 45

Favourite, schooner, 47

Fernando, barque, 91

Fleetwing, schooner, 48

Flora, cutter, 46

Flying Horse, sailing barge, 12

Foronia, barque, 102

Four Sisters, cutter, 46

Frank Guy, brigantine, 90

G. M. Tucker, barque, 18, 90

, ^ —, .„, -,. Gannet, cutter, 46, 57

Ganymede, barque, 91, 96

Gazelle, schooner, 94

George, cutter, 46

George E. Billings, schooner, 161

Gertrude, brig, 94

Gipsy, cutter, 45, 47

Gisborne, schooner, 49, 89

Gladbrook, barque, 93

Glenalvon, ship, 173

Glorianna, yacht, 33

Golden Hind, yacht, 192

Grei n Bond, barquentine, 104, 114

Greyhound, schooner, 39

Haere, scow, 192

Hairotha, barque, 92

Half-Cast, cutter, 46

Handa Isle, barquentine, 20, 89, 94, 106, 120-1, 127, 133

Harrier, yacht, 24

Harvest Home, cutter, 46

Hawk, schooner, 42

Hazel Craig, barque, 92, 97, 99

■ ' —*—O' i—~> 3-> 311 33 Heather Bell, barque, 90

Hebe, brig, 91

Helen, barque, 91

Helen Denny, barque, 17, 97-8

Helena, barque, 102

Helena, cutter, 46

Henry, cutter, 46, 57

Henry B. Hyde, ship, 121

Hero, cutter, 47

Hero, tug, 150

Highland Lass, barque, 94

Flikurangi, ketch, 36

Hippolas, barque, 106

Hiram Emery, barque, 18

Hudson, barque, 17

Hun, schooner, 20, 27

Hunter, ship, 15

lima, barquentine, 63, 95, 104, 118, ■52-4

India, barque, 103

Isabella, cutter, 46

Isola, barque, 92, too

James Craig, barque, 92, 98—100, lij

Jane, cutter, 45

Janet, cutter, 48

Jerfalcon, barquentine, 100

Jessie Craig, barque, 92, 100, 119

Jessie Henderson, schooner, 47

John Williams, Mission ship, 78

Joseph Conrad, ship, 99

Joseph Craig, barque, 106

Jubilee, barque, 93

Jubilee, schooner, 36

Julia M. Avery, brig, 90

Julia Percy, barque, 90, 100

Julie, barque, 74, 78, 80

Kaeo, schooner, 35—6

Kate, barque, 84

Kate McGregor, schooner, 49

Katherine, cutter, 46

Kathleen Hilda, barque, 87, 156-7

Katie, cutter, 46

Kensington, ship, 165

Kentish Lass, barque, 103

Kereru, ketch, 89

Killarney, barque, 91, 97

Kiwi, cutter, 46

Kiwi, yacht, 24-5, 28—31, 33

Kohi, scow, 38

La Bella, barquentine, 107

La Noba, schooner, 47

Lady Rath, cutter, 46

Lady Wolsey, barque, 187

Laira, barque, 92, 98

Lalla Rock, steamer, 47

Lancashire Lass, cutter, 46

Laughing Water, barque, 102

Leading Wind, ship, 89

Leah, cutter, 46

Lee, cutter, 46

Lena Gladys, scow, 192

Leo, cutter, 45-7

Lily, cutter, 46

Linda Webber, brigantine, 44, 48 .86, 94

Lindfield, ship, 173

Listbeth, barque, 164-5, '73

Lizzie, cutter, 48

Lizzie Parker, cutter, 45

Lizzie Taylor, ketch, 155

Loch Broom, barque, 189

Loch Katrine, barque, 101

Loch Lomond, ship, 105

Loch Ness, barque, 101

Loch Tay, barque, 101

Loongana, barque, 88

Louie, schooner, 50—7

Louisa Craig, barque, 92. 95, 99, io<

Lumberman’s Lassie, barque, 91

Luna, steamer, 46

Lurline, barque, 91

Lutterworth, barque, 17

Madura, barque, 90

Magellan Cloud, brigantine, 87

Maggie, scow, 192

Magic, cutter, 46

Mahoe, yacht, 33

Mahurangi, cutter, 57

Maile, schooner, 44

Maire-Bhan, ship, 17

Malay, barque, 18

Mana, cutter, 45-7

Mananui, barque, 63, 104, 107

Manurewa, barque, 87, 164

Margaret, barque, 94

Margarita, barque, 92, 105

■ ■■■■■ p—»»—»| **~. M -~, ;,., .wj Marion Josiah, barque, 164-5

Maris Stella, schooner, 131-2

Marjorie Craig, barque, 92

Marmion, schooner, 44

Mary Ann, cutter, 46

Mary Hasbrouck, barque, 18

Mary Isabel, barquentine, 63, 104, 106

Mary King, brigantine, 103

Mary Moore, barque, 91, 101

Masher, yacht, 33

Matakana, cutter, 45

May Anderson, schooner, 48

May Hogan, schooner, 47

Mazeppa, brigantine, 48

Meg Merrillees, brigantine, 62, 86

Mennock, barque, 165-6

Mercury, cutter, 45, 47

Merrie England, steamer, 137

Miena, ketch, 192

->iiv mi, hi.iui. Iyx Miltonburn, barque, 187

ivmionourn, oarque, 107 Miowera, steamer, 122—3

Moa, yacht, 32-4, 173

Moerewa, yacht, 192

Mokoia, ship, 154-5

Morea, cutter, 57

Morning Light, cutter, 45

Myrtle, brigantine, 47, 87

Nancy, cutter, 46

Natal Queen, barque, 87

Nautilus, cutter, 47

Nellie, cutter, 57-8

Nellie, schooner, 47

Neptune, barquentine, 63, 88, 91 104-5, io B, 110-14, 1 16-18, 151 ■55-6

Neptune, brig, 18, 91

Newcastle, steamer, 140—1

Ngakahi, cutter, 19

Ngapuhi, yawl, 24

Niagara, liner, 88

Nimrod, brig, 16

216

Northern Chief, barque, 20, 84 7, 94, 139-44, 147. 165

Norval, schooner, 36, 44

Nor-west, scow, 192

Notero, barque, 91-2

Novelty, barque, 20, 84, 94

Ocean Ranger, barquentine, 90

Ohinemuri, steamer, 105

Olive, schooner, 62

Onyx, barque, 90, g2

Orpheus, schooner, 27—8

Otago, barque, 92, 101, 112

Otahuhu, cutter, 46

Paku, cutter, 45

Pass of Balmaha, ship, 149

Peerless, schooner, 47

Pelotas, barquentine, 106

Pendle Hill, barquentine, 86, 101

Peru, barque, 92, 95, 99

Petrel, cutter, 46

Platina, barque, 16

Plumier, ship, 15

Polly Woodside, barque, 92, 96

, . . v , -1--, ;,-, ;?- Port Jackson, barque, 139, 189

Port Patrick, ship, 177

Porter, brig, 16

Posthumus, barque, 102

Potosie, barque, 173

Preussen, ship, 1 73

Prince John, barquentine, 0. T>_: a _u:_ - ~c

Prize, mystery ship, 106

Prosperity, brigantine, 86

Providence, schooner, 19

Quathlamba, barque, 92, 97, 99

Queen Margaret, barque, 187

Rajore, ship, 177

Rangatira, cutter, 20, 46, 48-9

Raupo, barque, 95

»^ ui ™, u«. H m, yj Rebecca, barque, 91

Result, sailing scow, 56

Rewa, cutter, 46

Rewa (ex Alice A. Leigh), barque, 92-3, 95

Reward, schooner, 48

Ringarooma, steamer, 56

Rio Loge, brigantine, 106

River Boyne, barquentine, 96, 101

........ ~.,,,,.., U u>«^ ui~iimil,, y- 1w 1 River Hunter, barquentine, 105

Robin Hood, brig, 18

Rob-Roy, cutter, 46

Rona, barque, 02, q6

ixuiiti, udiquc, yn, yo Rosalie, cutter. a 6

i\.osaue, cuiier, 40 Rosanna, ship, 16

Rose, cutter, 45, 48

Rothesay Bay, barque, 92, 96

Royal Alfred, steamer, 47

Royal Tar, barque, 88

Ruapehu, liner, 17

Ryno, brigantine, 44, 48, 87

INDEX

217

Saint Kilda, barquentine, 90, 119, 160-3, 168

Saint Mirren, ship, 177

Saint Patrick, ship, 16

Samuel Plimsoll, ship, 17, 98

Sarah, cutter, 46

Saucy Kate, schooner, 21

Saxon, schooner, 36

Sea Lark, survey ship, 135

Seafarer, barque, 185

Seagull, cutter, 46

Seeadler, ship, 149

Selwyn Craig, barquentine, 92, 96

Senator, ship, 173

Severn, cutter, 45

Shandon, barque, 96, 101

Shenandoah, barque, 123

Silas, barque, 78

Silberhorn, barque, 165

Silver Cloud, barquentine, 90, 119

Singe, barque, 92, 96 e;_ it l._: »: c_ oc

Sir Henry, brigantine, 65, 86

Sir John Franklin, schooner, 16

Snark, yacht, 162

Sophia R. Luhrs, barque, 18, 85, 103

South Australian, barque, 101

Southern Cross, barquentine, 60-1, 89, 106, 119, 148-52

Southern Cross, Mission schooner, 12

Sovereign of the Seas, cutter, 45-7, 57-8

Sovereign of the Seas, schooner, 48, s', 57

Speedy, ship, 15

Spitfire, cutter, 36, 45

Splendid, barque, 103-4

Spray, brigantine, 94

Staffa, steamer, 13

Stag, cutter, 45

Stanley, brigantine, 86

Start, cutter, 45

Stella, steamer, 90

Stirling, tug, 110

Stirlingshire, ship, 20

Sussex, barque, 173

Swift, yacht, 31

Sybil, schooner, 20, 45, 48-52

Takapuna, steamer, 106

Tamaki Packet, cutter, 45

Tararewa, ketch, 21, 39

Tay, cutter, 46

Teaser, cutter, 46

Teviot, cutter, 45

Thetis, yacht, 33

Thistlebank, barque, 173, 174

Thomas and Henry, brig, 91

Three Cheers, schooner, 20, 45, 49, 31. 94

Three-Sisters, cutter, 46

Tokerau, cutter, 45

Tom Fisher, schooner, 132-7

Tongariro, ferry steamer, 12

Torea, schooner, 48-9, 52

Torrens, ship, 149

Transit, cutter, 46

Transit, schooner, 45, 47-9, 51

Trinidad, barquentine, 18

Turakina, ship, 1 7

Vale Royal, barque, 87

Venus, ship, 15

Veritas, barque, 90, 96

Vesper, scow, 38-9

Victor, barque, 96

Vindex, barque, 103

Vindex, scow, 38—9, 63

Vision, brig, 9!

Vivid, barque, 91

Vixen, cutter, 46

Vixen, scow, 12-13, 26-8, 33. 38-9 56, 58, 63, 183

Voorburg, barquentine, 88

Waiapu, schooner, 36

Wai-iti, barque, 92, 96

Wairiki, yacht, 31—3

Waitemata, barquentine, 90

■■ ■■" ■■■■»■■! »—»»t Wakatipu, steamer, 98

Wanderer, cutter, 45

Wanderer, scow, 38

War Lord, schooner, 43

Watchman, cutter, 46

Water Lily, cutter, 46

Weathersfield. barque, 92. 96-7

Weir, cutter, 45

Wenona, barque, 92, 97

West Australian, barque, 90

Westland, ship. 1 7

Whangarei, cutter, 46

Whitepine, barque, 97

Wild Wave, barque. 91, 1 11-12

Wild Wave, brig, 85

Wild Wave, brig, 91

Wild Wave, schooner, 91

Wild Wave, schooner, 91

Wild Wave, schooner, gi \*': 11:_ i»r:_ I.:_ -.... .c

Willie Winkie. cutter. 46

Will Watch, ketch. 36. 39. 192

..... (tbvm*, ■« n ■■, jy, *y.s Windsor Park. ship. 176

Winifred, schooner. 49

> ; —1 t. Woodlark, brig. 91

Woollahra. barque, 105

Woosung. barque. 90, 92

Wyandra. steamer, 122

Ysabel (ex Southern Crossl. barque 20. 60-6, 68, 70. 72. 74-8. 80-3 89, 106, 108. 118-19. '4B. 154

Yum Yum. yacht. 33

Zingara, schooner. 42

—o t Zior, schooner. 36

SAILS BENEATH THE SOUTHERN CROSS