FEARSOME VOYAGES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 161, 9 July 1926, Page 9

FEARSOME VOYAGES.

BATTLES WITH THE SEA.

ATLANTIC AND SOUTHERN" STORMS.

The Swedish freighter Anten, 93 days out of Gothenburg, has reached Melbourne, after one of the worst voyages of her career. Two lifeboats were missing, large sections of the bridge were smashed in, and the steps leading from the main to the bridge decks were swept away. The Anten steamed into heavy weather shortly after leaving Capetown. For days mountainous seas washed the decks. ' Large quantities of movable deck gear went by the board, and doors were stove in. Girders and stanchions groaned and creaked under the pounding ot the seas. It was with the utmost caution that members of the crew ventured on to the decks. With her holds full of maize and her Plimsoll on the water, the Anten was frequently under water. The storm followed the vessel across the Indian Ocean, the seas changing their direction to all points of the compass. Never Hove To. It was a commendable feat that Captain Backstrom did not once heave to. Into tremendous head seas he drove the Anten. Beam seas, quarter seas and running seas made no difference. The Anten ploughed through them all. The Anten was in the mid-Atlantic recently, and experienced the severity of the storm which endangered shipping and finally brought about the foundering of the steamer Antinae. On that occasion heavy seas swept over the poop and cleared the decks from stem to stern. A lifeboat hanging from its davits on the bridge was smashed to matchwood and carried overboard. Every door in the ship was stove in. The officers' quarters were flooded and wrecked. The heavy thick plates above the living quarters amidships were bent in. The steering house was twisted like a piece of paper, and the roof was pushed in. Seas flooded the galley and the dining room. The vessel reached her destination in a desperate condition. She was overhauled and. reconditioned at a cost of several thousand pounds, and put to sea again. The voyage just concluded at Melbourne was her first abroad since her last battle with the seas. The Anten is again ready for the shipwright, but the "damage this time is not quite so i great.