REEF AND PALM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 121, 24 May 1932, Page 3

REEF AND PALM.

SAILOR'S REMINISCENCES. TRADING IN THE PACIFIC. TOW OF THE TAVIUNL "Those were the days," he said. "You dropped right out of civilisation when you had left Auckland, and lived in a world of your own till you got back again. Wireless was unheard of. Those were the days. Why, I remember how we went away one time, and when we got back we were told that the Boer war was on." Mr. J. Clirisholm, who has followed the sea more years than he cares to recall, was speaking of 30 years ago, of trade in the Islands. He passed through Auckland yesterday by the Morinda on his way to Sydney. 'Those who live in the midst of change, who have never known anything but modernity, find it difficult to capture the point of view of those older people for whom the flood tide of life has ebbed and left them in the shallows. '"Those were the days," lie reiterated. "Last Word" in Ships. When first he went to the Island trade lie was a member of the crew of the Ovalau, the last ship of the Union Company to carry yards. She was topsailschooner rigged, of 1100 tons, and she travelled between Tonga, Samoa and Sydney. "Things were different then," he said again. "We had no wireless and no refrigerators. Wc used kerosene for lighting, and we carried our own livestock. Our square-rigged steamer was the 'last word' and we felt like racehorses among broken-down hacks aboard our ship when wc looked at others in tlic same harbour. And now the Aorangi goes there. "In 30 years mere ports of call have grown to he sizeable towns. Suva, a village of lints and hotels, has come to be the port of call of modern liners. Once the harbour was filled with little schooners, some of them manned by the outcasts of the nations. Now there are parks and shops and ladies in pretty drosses." He was in Suva when the first cable was opened. "You could cable free that day," he remarked.

As for the other islands, they were . undisturbed, unless by one of the little < backwater schooners, which would creep into one of the little lagoon bays, palmfringed, and out again with a mixed < cargo, some pearls, and even .sonic "black i ivory." "For," ho explained, "even so short a while ago 'blackbirding' was not an uncommon thing. Many a cargo, even then, went from the Pacific to the sugar plantations of Queensland. Taviuni's Broken Tail-shaft. "It was in the Ovalau, when we were under contract with the French Government, that we heard of the declaration of the Boer War. We were carrying mails out Papeete way, and when we arrived in Auckland again we heard that tho war was on. Had we been away for months, or even years, as some of the little schooners wore that pottered about the islands, we might never have heard of it. Even to-day, further back from tho well-run waterways, things go on much the same, in spite of wireless, and what is known as civilisation. Fast mail services have pushed against the fringe of the wilderness and set it back a little, that is all; but it is hard for lis older men to see it go, and so quickly." ' But Mr. Chrisholm's adventures did not begin and end in the Islands. He was on tho Taviuni when she broke her tail-shaft at Ariel Beef, off the East Coast, between Auckland and Gisborne, on her way to Wellington from Auckland. "Wo drifted for 11 days before our plight was noticed," he said. "The weather became rougher, and we were ordered to sleep in our clothes all the time, as we began to get near tho shore. However, for some reason tho drift stopped, and wo were out of immediate danger. But she was helpless, and wal- ! lowed in each trough." Then they were seen by the Mimiro, and she came to them. In epite of tho storm, a towline was fixed; but after a few hours, with the weather getting worse, the line parted. Tho helpless ship spent another couple of days drifting, before she was seen by the Union Company's Moura. She put a line aboard and the ship's company thought that their troubles were passed. But it blew up again, and a second time the Taviuni broke away. Then the Omapere was sent out to look for them, and they saw the lights about 11 o'clock one night. By that time the weather had moderated, and they were taken into Napier. They replenished the low stocks of provisions, and duly arrived in Wellington. Torpedoed at Aden. Mr. Chrisholm was near shipwreck that time, but once, during tlie war, he actually met it. His ship was mined just outside Aden, in 1916. "The Southborough was taking a load of wheat Home from South Australia. When just near that coaling station, into which we were going, we struck it. We were just getting ready to go ashore; in fact some of the chaps were just cleaning their hoots. Then it came, and in a few minutes we were struggling in the water. We had time to save nothing. I was in a singlet and a pair of trousers. The mine got us for'ard, and she sank like a, stone. Only seven were saved out of 38. I was rescued by a British destroyer after I had been in the water for only 20 minutes. After a couple of days in Aden, we shipped again in the Al7, an Australian wartime transport of the 'Strath' line, bcrnnd for Hull." They arrived without incident. "Finding a ship was no trouble in those days," the old man said regretfully; "they wanted vou."