STOUT THE SAILOR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 173, 24 July 1930, Page 22

STOUT THE SAILOR.

EARLY EXPERIENCES.

VOYAGE TO NEW ZEALAND.

PASSENGERS WHO WORKED THE SHIP.

(By J.C.)

Maybe a commodore of a great merchant fleet, perhaps even an admiral of the Royal Navy, was lost to the 6ea when the late Sir Robert Stout as a youth decided his career in favour of a shore life. He was more than half a sailor by the time he landed in New Zealand in 1864. Before he left his native Shetlands he had mastered the science of navigation, and while only sixteen or seventeen he was instructing his fellow islanders in the flieoretical side of it. His voyage to New Zealand furnished him with the practical experience and with sound schooling in seamanship. It was a rough, hard voyage in the oldtime sailing ship, leaky, slow and undermanned. Stout's ship took 128 days 011 the passage from London to tho Bluff. Passengers to the Rescue. Sir Robert, narrating some incidents of the voyage, eaid that at one time the ship had three feet of water in the after a hurricane in the North Atlantic hold. There were twelve sailors, and only one of them was fit to work, so the passengers were called 011 to help work the ship. There was 110 grumbling among them; they were mostly staunch Scottish and North of Ireland men, and the young men among them, like Stout, thoroughly enjoyed the eailoring work, rough as it was*. When Stout and another man came down 011 to the poop one day after furling the mizzen-top-gallant sail Stout was asked by the captain how long he had been at sea. The young Shetlander seemed to the skipper quite an old lmnd at the sailhandling game. Setting Sails. After the bad weather off Madeira Robert Stout was taking his turn ac the wheel one night. On duty there were only the second mate, the bo'sun and one seaman; all the rest were worn out or hurt. The captain before going below told the second mate not to call any of the crew but to keep her going with the small canvas that was set. Stout was still at the wheel when the second mate said to him that it was a pity they hadn't more sail set, as the wind was now faii\ "Well," said Robert Stout, "why not set the sails? The passengers can do it." He offered to go and rouse out some volunteers. The mate agreed, and took the wheel. Stout went below and found the younger passengers all eager to help, tip they came, and under the second mate's direction set to work. They were up aloft in "the branches" and on the decks for some hours, setting and trimming sail. When the captain—who hadn't heard the noise on deck, for he was making up for two nights of lost sleep—came on deck at daylight he was astonished to find the ship under all sail; even the studding-sails were set. He called the second mate and asked him: "Thompson, didn't I tell 'you not to call the men?" "Yes, sir," said the mate, "I didn't call them. The passengers set the sails." The captain declared he was in luck's way. Never had he had that experience before of the passengers taking the crew's pace. Sir Robert, in his narrative of the voyage, said that all except one of the passengers—who had been in an American warship—were landsmen. The strongest and happiest man of the lot, aloft or 011 deck, was a County Down farmer, who afterwards did well in Central Otago.