AROUND THE WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 133, 7 June 1930, Page 4

AROUND THE WORLD.

GOSSIP OF THE PORTS.

MODERN ADVENTURERS.

(By LEE-FORE-BRACE.)

What is the lure that causes man to set sail in small craft for the far ends of the world? Is it love for notoriety, or is it the desire to escape from the deadly round of civilised life and a world in which mechanism is destroying romance? No one could ever suggest that men like Mulhauaer or O'Brien were seeking notoriety when they made their epic voyages. The writer met both these gentlemen when they visited Auckland, and he found it extremely difficult to get them to talk about their adventures. There have been cases, of course, where men have started out to cross the Atlantic in open boats, but brave as they were, they can merely be likened to those who have attempted to swim the Niagara Falls. The majority of the many, amateurs and professionals, who made long ocean voyages in small craft did it for the sheer love of sailing, of doing something with their own hands and brains, to experience the exaltation of making a correct landfall I across thousands of miles of trackless ocean. But first of all they have been lovers of ships, and the salt blood ot the sea was in their veins. Round the Horn in 40-Foot Boat. As far back as 1800 a Captain Clev eland, of Salem, sailed a 15-foot cutter singlehanded from the Cape of Good Hope to Alaska. In 1849 (the year ot the Galifornian gold rush) J. M. Cranston sailed from New Bedford, on the east coast of America, round Cape Horn in a 40-foofc boat. He covered the 13,000 miles in 230 days, a passage that was very often exceeded by the big powerful grain ships. What makes this voyage all the more interesting is the fact that Cranston, prior to his great voyage, was never out of sight of land. He had only yachting experience to rely on, and his knowledge of navigation was limited to the calculating of latitude and longitude. In 1866 the 27-foot yawl Alice, manned by a crew of eight yachtsmen, the eldest only 24 years of age, crossed from Boston to the Solent in 18 days, and returned without mishap to her home port in double the time. Her navigator was a young surveyor, and he had only two weeks tuition in navigation before starting out on the adventure. Rowed Across the Atlantic. Perhaps the most amazing feat of all was the cruise of the Go, Get There. This queerly-riamed craft was an ordinary ship's long boat, manned by two New York watemen. In 1896 they rowed from New York to Havre, occupying 63 days on the trip. Their crazy _ craft was capsized several times, and it was fortunate that they kept to the steamer lane in the Atlantic, because, on one occasion, they lost all their stores and water. As a matter of fact, they practically "cadged" their way across, receiving assistance from no less than eighteen vessels. Their knowledge of navigation was nil, their compass could not be i" " upon, and if it had not been for the : >ce and relief they received from vessels the voyage would never hav-j terminated as it did.

In 1901, an ex-whaling captain, J. R. Blackburn, sailed his 25-foot sloop without assistance from Gloucester, Mass., to Lisbon. Portugal, in ;!0 clays. This voyage might sound commonplace, but when we are told that Blackburn had neither hands nor feet, it gives one food for great thought as to how he did it. One of the longest voyages in a email craft was that undertaken by Captain Voss in his famous Tillicum. She was only a 40-foot canoe, decked and rigged as a three-masted schooner, Tlife Tillicum sailed from Victoria, British Columbia, with Voss and a companion named Luxton aboard, crossed the Pacific to Australia, then via Auckland and the Indian Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope, thence across the South Atlantic to Pernambuco, to recross to the Azores and England. In 159 months the little vessel covered no less than 40,000 miles. All kinds of weather were met with, gales and squalls and hurricanes, but the Tillicum was a weatherly craft and rode the stormiest sea like a gull. The First Motor Boat. In 1902 the internal combustion engine entered into the long voyage game. To the Abiel Abbott Low stands the honour of being the first motor boat to cross the Atlantic. Manned by W. C. Newman and his seventeen-year-old son, she crossed from New York to Falmouth in 26 days, her 10 h.p. engine having consumed 440 gallons of benzine on the passage. In 1912 another motor boat made a much more lengthy voyage, from America to St. Petersburg, 61 days being the sailing time. Jack London made his Pacific voyaging in the Snark in 1902, but there was nothing outstanding in his adventures, owing, perhaps, to the temperate latitudes in which lie cruised.. The Snark only experienced two moderate gales throughout the whole of the voyage. In more recent years there have been several noteworthy long voyages in small craft. A well-known American yachtsman, Mr. W. W. Nutting, sailed the, 45-foot yawl Typhoon from New York to Cowes and back in 1920. Two years later, when attempting to make a similar voyage in a smaller ship, the vessel and crew were lost oflt the coast of Iceland, only a few pieces of wreckage being picked up which told the tale.

Six hardy amateur yachtsmen, all boys, sailed their 60-foot schooner, the L. W. Berry, across the Atlantic and round the coasts of the British Isles. Their chart tracks showed that they were excellent navigators, and the handling of the schooner in the several gales encountered proved them to be sailors all. Conor O'Brien's Saoirse. The years since the war have produced many British lovers of ships and long voyages. Ralph Stock, the novelist and playwright, in a small cutter, accompanied by his sister and an old shellback as crew, sailed her to the Pacific. Conor O'Brien in his ketch, the Saoirse, circumnavigated the world. Those of us who had the pleasure of inspecting his stout little craft when she lay at the Auckland wharf, wondered how she ever managed to ride through the long greybeards of the Horn. Sailormcn will agree with me that there is nothing more awe-inspiring to be seen on the deep-waters than the menacing swirl of a big greybeard in the Roaring 'Forties. Watching them from the high level of a big ship's poop as they came rolling up astern caused one to clutch instinctively at the rigging, getting ready, as it were, to clamber aloft to safety. If that was the feeling on the seaworthy clippers, one wonders what were the feelings of O'Brien when he was running his casting down. Of all the rigs of the small vessels which have gone adventuring on the _ seven seas, I like the rig of the Saoirse best of all. The square sails on the main would give her a lift in a big seaway, and would enable her to run out a gale when it would be necessary to lay a lore-and-after to the wind. Small Boats' Advantages. After Shackleton's boat journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia, and the more recent achievement of Captain West and his three fellow survivors of the Amy Turner, in sailing their leaky lifeboat from Guam to the Philippines, there would seem to be no limit to what can be accomplished in a small boat. It is a well known fact that, under certain conditions of weather, a small craft has certain advantages over one of larger build. With a sea-anchor out, and an oil-bag attached to it, an ordinary ship's lifeboat will ride through anything. One cannot but admire the courage and hardihood of those modern adventurers who set out on such quests. In ships, often very much smaller than those used by the explorers of the sixteenth century, they have dared the stormiest oceans of the world, which proves beyond all doubt that the breed is the same, and the same salt blood of the sea is flowing strongly. ,