THE LITTLE SHIPS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 25, 31 January 1933, Page 6

THE LITTLE SHIPS.

NURSERY OF; SAILORMEN.

(By TANGIWAI.)

The preservation of the fine arfc of handling j sails will lie with the small craft, now that this ' highly-mechanised age has sent the square-rigger - into almost complete oblivion. The yachts and i the long-distance little cruisers will probably incre'ase in numbers and their crows will perpetuate the ancient traditions of the world of canvas and the handling of wind-driven vessels. Sail will never entirely depart from the seas, for besides the economical advantages of a combination of sail and motor propulsion for small coasting craft, such as our scows, the sailorly skill involved in using the winds to take one round the curve of the world will always appeal to the young and adventurous heart. Long ocean voyages in little ships have a remarkable attraction for some of our amateur sailors, and singular good luck appears to have accompanied most of these plucky seafarers, setting out with much enthusiasm but little experience. The islands of the Pacific offer an always enchanting objective for our Southern-world sailors, but there are hard-faring pleasure-cruisers who find a kind of stern joy in facing the stormiest , weather of the world's end. A little Danish ketch, the Monsunen, which sailed out of Wellington a few days ago on. her return voyage to Copenhagen, goes by way of Cape Horn. Her owner, Captain Knu'd Andersen, who is a writer as well as a sailor, and his crew of four, will find themselves in seas as lonely as in the days of Drake and Cook. There was a constant procession of large craft round the Horn in the clipper ship era; now the vast Southern Ocean very seldom sees a sail or a smoke. The descendant of the Vikings will probably have it all to himself and his tiny ship. The Monsunen is only a little over fifty tons, a seemingly absurd bit of a craft to dare those gale-swept latitudes. Yet she is by no means the smallest vessel to attack the Cape Horn route. The Saoirse, Captain Connor O'Brien's little ketch, which sailed from Auckland on her return voyage to Ireland eight years ago, was only twelve tons. She was nearly lost in a sudden south-west squall off Cape Horn; she went over 011 her beam-ends, her steering gear carried away, and she all but capsized before the crew got her hove-to. It took the Saoirse forty-seven days from Auckland to reach her first anchorage, Port Stanley, in the Falkland Islands. Icebergs, gales of wind and snow and hail, continual wet clothes, little sleep and little warm food were some of the sailors' pleasures of the struggle round "Cape Stormy." The Monsnnens may have better fortune, but ho is a brave man who will'tackle those wild seas in a fifty-tonncr. The ketch, or yawl, rig is so handy a rig for such a craft that it is becoming almost universal now in small pleasure cruisers which depend chiefly or wholly on the wind.. Neither the Saoirse nor the Monsunen has auxiliary engine power, which is more necessary for coasting or for South Sea Islands cruising than on long-distance voyages. Easily snugged down, a ketch such as Captain Andersen's is the most convenientlycanvased imaginable. Like the Saoirse, too, she is rigged with a square-sail for running, and with the strong westerlies behind her in the Southern Ocean this sail is likely to be the most useful of all.

The Monsunen's skipper-owner is one of those men who have been described as gluttons for adventure. The little ketch is not small enough for him; Jio talks of coming out to this part of tho world again in another craft, a yawl which h° and his young daughter, now in Denmark, can sail themselves. Charles Kingslcy wrote about the hard English weather that bred hard English men. Scandinavian sailors like Andersen and Irishmen like O'Brien appear to flourish on that kind of weather in the. hazards of the sea.