DOWN TO THE SEA.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 222, 19 September 1929, Page 10

DOWN TO THE SEA.

FIFTY-SEVEN YEARS AFLOAT. THE ANCIENT MARINER. "IF I WERE YOUNG AGAIN." (By F.C.J.) In answer to my hail a face seamed with the deep wrinkles of sixty years spray and sun, crowned with thin wisps of grey hair, appeared over the bulwarks of the old hulk.as she lay at anchor in the Waitemata* "Tie up your dinghy, sir, and come aboard." I clambered up. The little, stooping watchman led me along the worn deck to the bare little room that had been the seamen's mess. We sat down at the bare deal table. He pulled from his. pocket an oddly-carved pipe that looked as. old as himself, filled and lifted it, andjsat there with his old eyes looking far away into a life of toil, privation and storm. Of fifty-seven years, he told—tales of Valparaiso, of the seamen's dosshouse in Shanghai, of days loafed away on the waterfront of Mandalay and the far places of the eartli were brought close together and seemed i just at hand like the lights that twinkled over yonder in the bay. Ever and anon he would pause, and dream, and he would forget liis pipe and hold it unlighted in his hand. "Fifty-seven years ago it was when I told my father I was going to sea. My father was angry and said, 'No."' Then he told the old familiar story of going to sea for one .year as a trial. The year passed and though- bitter experience changed the boy to the man pride forbade any admission of disillusion. One year stripped the sea of its glamour, but the step once taken, there was no turning back. "Be a lawyer, a professor, an office man, but do not go to sea," advised the little grey, old figure whose sole reward for so many years' service was the loneliness of the watchman's vigilhe who when himself young had refused to be advised. Grew Old in Service. For 30 years he had been with the same company and for more than 25 with the same skipper. He grew old in the service of - the All Glen Company, and in their ships he sailed into the far places of the earth. "I sailed in the Glenoglen," he added. "I sailed in the Glenogle and in the Glenside, and I follow the same captain in all. Storms!" he laughed. "There was one the other night. I found the roof in my cabin here leak. Oh! at sea, you ask," and he made a deprecatory gesture. "There were many, many storms. I remember one and it blew the mainyard away. The mfiinyard it was about 60 feet long, you know. It took t'ree to hold the wheel." He grasped his pipe as though he again held the spokes in his grasp.

"We were t'ree days when we made Mo headway. The deck ran all the time knee-deep in water, and for t'ree days the cook could not light the galley fire. We had no cooked meal, only hard biscuit. During this time we slept aft in the main caljin, all-of us under the table. We slept in our oilskins, for we had to turn out at any time. All hands were called out to shorten sail, even the stewards. The cook was the only man left below. I went aloft and my hands could hardly feel the ropes. The sail was like a piece of frozen steel when I tried to grasp and fold it. The water rose to meet me, and when I looked down to the decks, below, I could not tell which was the sea and which was the ship. f?tke trembled and I thought the masts would Break; but— The light died from his eyes and the tenseness from his attitude. "Like all the others she blew herself out," he added, "She was a storm, though!" Here he paused to light his pipe which he seemed to have forgotten. "Yes, the Sofala was lost," he replied, when I asked him if he had seen shipwreck. "We were six days out of Montevideo when I noticed there was water in the hold. I was the carpenter's mate. I went and told the captain, but he laughed; it was the water draining out of the wet sand ballast we hadtaken in Montevideo. What could I ,say? I knew that the ship ..leaked, but carpenter's mate —I We dried'her out, and for six days we watched the water creep in and in; but it was not water from the sand. Then when I went down one morning and found it hacl risen very fast in the night, I knew the seam was opening. I went again and told the captain and this time he ordered the carpenter to make a search. I found the hole. It was away up for'ard. Then I remembered how, in coming out of Montevideo, the pilot had left the anchor swinging by a length of chain over the side. They were all of wood and the anchor must have been bumped against them again and again until it smashed a hole. "After he had seen the hole, the captain immediately ordered the ship to be put about to return to port. At the best of times there was a great strain on a vessel when she turned, and in her weakened condition she could not stand the sudden jar. The seam opened right up and she was a doomed ship. That was at five in the afternoon. All that every man worked at the pumps, but little could be done, for the water froze in the pumps as tliey worked. Man, she was cold that night!" He shivered and drew his jacket closer round him as he sat here -in the cabin. In the morning they sighted a ship, which, seeing their distress signal, came to discover the trouble, The Sofala was steadily getting lower in the water, and the captain gave the order for the crew to abandon ship and to go aboard the rescuer. She was a Norwegian. Iler captain had three medals for going to the assistance of vessels in distress. "In the first boat we took across the ship's canary and two pigs," smiled the watchman in happy recollection. Seventy pigeons also were liberated. "They circled twice round us, then they flew away north. We did not see them again." As a sort of a forlorn hope, the skipper, the first and second mates stayed aboard the Sofala all that day and the next, night. The Norwegian stood bv until, the next day, even they realised there was no hope. "We watched her go very quietly and very slmvly," said the old man dreamily. She remained on an even keel, and we saw her masts disappear little by little." For eight days the Sofala's company were aboard the Norwegian vessel; but 24 men drink a lot of water, and when they saw the water becoming short, they again took to the boats. Montevideo was reached without mishap.' I Sunk in Collision. „ y*' l ' ;o t'eter Gordon was lost in diity weather, there were seventeen drowned, "With a great gaping hole we sank in half an hour," ha said. "We were out of Glasgow going to Sydney.

It was blowing hard' when we sighted the Frenchman, but in a full sail breeze, we lost her again very quickly. Nobody noticed the Frenchman again till she was right on top of us. She tore through t'ree bulkheads. Immediately we began - to sink, and a full sail breeze was good for full sails, but not for a rapidly filling hulk. . We did not see the Frenchman again. "It was a yacht which we were carrying as pai"t of our deck cargo that saved us. She was a pleasure boat for some- " body in Sydney. We unlashed liar, and provisioned her and put her over the side. We did not know whether she, was seaworthy after being so long on deck. We had to chance that. We did 1 not have much time. The seas were breaking all over us and the decks were growing rapidly steeper. We got away with the captain, his wife and some of the officers. His wife was very brave, and very beautiful, too. What could we do in our little boat? We searched for the rest of the crew, but in that sea we could' see nothing. There were seventeen drowned. I do not know what became of the Frenchman, but her name was the Marie Terese from Bordeaux—with an •; accent here and an accent there," he said ; with a quaint air of pride. "Tell your friends they must never go to sea," said the- bent, little old man.'» What have I gained at sea? If I were ,j young again, I—." His voice trailed off into thought. Above us in the rigging, the wind shrilled a lament for days that are gone, and, with unseeing eyes that gazed down 57 years, the old sailor lived' again in the past.