THRILLING VOYAGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 245, 16 October 1931, Page 3

THRILLING VOYAGE.

ACROSS ATLANTIC IN KETCH. WRECKED ON CORAL REEF. NEW ZEALANDER IN CREW. • " (From Our Own Correspondent.) VANCOUVER, September 18. Jack Harper, once a British Columbia cowboy, and more recently a member of a crew of four who crossed the Atlantic in a 58-foot ketch, the oldest vesserthat ever made the. perilous crossing, arrived in Montreal on the freighter Cornwallis.

An ex-Guardsman, a New Zealander (whose name has not been: learned), an Austrian and Harper sailed out of Plymouth in the tiny ship, which eventually came to grief oha coralreef off Barbadoes, British West Indies. The owner of the ketch, Captain 0. R. Goss, then sailed, for St. John, the New Zealander left for home, the Austrian joined a steamer going to Ai-genthia, and.Harper has returned to Canada. He threw up his job as a, cowpunchcr in the West to sail to England on a cattle boat. While on the other side a friend introduced him to Captain Goss, and: desirous of returning to Canada, he seized the opportunity to join the crew, as it was intended to go through the Panama Canal to Vancouver, but, as stated, the little craft foundered in the Indies.

The Hearts of Oak, formerly a fishing vessel, was sixty years old when Captain Goss purchased her in England, and he spent a year on board the ship putting her in shape, in readiness for the Atlantic adventure. In spite of enceuntering heavy gtorms, the ketch did not ship any seas, but shortly after leaving Plymouth she began to leak, and she was eventually beached at a point in Brittany and her seams were caulked. Revictualling was undertaken in the Canary Islands, and the voyage was continued until the mishap off Barbadoes. ;

Harper had had no experience of seamanship, and at the outset of the perilous voyage he was very seasick. As he was then responsible for-doing much of the cooking the constant sight of food did not tend to make him better, he said. Then when their craft sprang a leak, he had to take a spell at the wheel, and he was engaged for long hours at the pumps. The small ship nearly perished when they were two days out of the Canaries, for they narrowly missed being run down by an ocean liner. A thick fog prevented a man seeing his hand when held out in front of him, and although they kept on sounding a horn the liner was almost on them before their presence was discovered. The most streimous episode, Harper recalled, was after they had struck the rock near Barbadoes. They had to move their ■ballaet quickly in consequence of this misfortune, and beneath a broiling tropic sun they shifted seven and a half tons of pig iron. Their best sailing day, he said, was while they were in mid-ocean. They covered 175 miles. In all the party was 48 days on the ocean, and they covered 4500 miles. As aids to navigation Captain Gobs carried a chronometer, a sextant, compass, charts and a portable wireless set. The New Zealahder in the crew graduated from Oxford. He afterwards booked a passage to Panama, en route to New Zealand. Captain Goss expects to obtain a vessel in Vancouver and sail to the antipodes.