SOUTH SEA ADVENTURE

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 7, 9 January 1937, Page 1 (Supplement)

SOUTH SEA ADVENTURE

THE LAST RESORT. THE DRIFTAWATS OF THE ESSEX. (By J.C.) Long boat voyages, following on shipwreck, are numerous in the story of the South Seas. There were many besides Bligh's great boat-sailing feat after the mutiny of the Bounty. There are lessor known voyages in small open crait, tropical traverses extending in some cases over 2000 miles ot ocean. Sometimes boat crews made a feast for a cannibal tribe; that was the invariable fate of a defenceless crew in the black islands of Melanesia in other days. More than onc e there was an even more fearful tragedy—there was cannibalism in the driftaway boat or on the tossing raft. White men have turned "kaftangata," as the Maori would say. The scene of the present story was the most solitary stretch of ocean on the globe at that era—the Eastern Pacific, between the Marquesas and the Tuamotu Archipelago and the coast of Cential and South America. Nowadays Panama-route liners continually traverse these waters. One of the sperm whale hunters in that sector early last century was a ship from Nantucket named the Essex, commanded by Captain George Pollard. The first mate was Mr. Owen Cbaee. On November 20, 1820, two of the Essex's boats each got fast to a Whale. Another sperm whale, of huge size, 80ft or 90ft long, came rushing with great swiftness at the ship, and struck with tremendous force against the stern-post. It shook its head and drew off, but came at the ship again nearly an hour after wards. It rushed at the ship with such force on the beam that it stove in nor timbers, and she soon filled and became waterlogged. The barrels in her hold, apparently, kept her from sinking at once.

This episode of a whale ramming a ship will remind those who have lead Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" of the fate of the whale ship Pequod in that story. The mate of the Essex said that the whale evidently was fired with reenge for the attack on its companions, and charged the ship with intent to destroy it. Melville very likely based his description of the Pequod's end on the episode of the Essex. But the Pequod and all her crew went down, and the men in the whale boat too, in the story. The Essex remained afloat long enough to allow her crew, numbering 20 (six of whom were negroes) to get clear in three boats. They pulled away and watched the ship sink.

The position of the shipwreck was a few degrees south of the equator and in about 118 west longitude. Tahiti lay to the south-west. The Marquesas were cannibal islands in those days, but Tahiti was different. The people were .very friendly and the English misskm-

Aries had been established there many years. Captain Pollard, however, was not aware of that; he apparently believed that most of those Eastern Pacific islands were peopled by man-eating savages. So, instead of steering for Tahiti, or for the nearer Low Archipelago, the Tuaxnotu cloud of coral atolls, he thought his best course was to make for the coast of South America, which was more than 2000 miles awav.

On a Desert Island.

One of the boats, the second mate's, with six men, parted from the others and was never heard of again. The other two kept in company. After many days the starving crews sighted a low coral island. By this time the food and water in the boats were exhausted. They landed on this island, which was uninhabited. It was Ducie, one of the solitary desert islands east of Pitcairn Island. The present-day Pitcairners occasionally visit it to procure a small but strong tree useful for boat-building.

The boats were hauled up on this coral sand bay —the old Spanish navigators named it Encarnacion —and the castaways made camp, with their sails for scanty tent cover. To their dismay the sailors discovered that the island was almost without water. There was no likelihood of being rescued if they remained there, so there was nothing for it but to . put out again on the wide and pitiless ocean.

Three of the 14 castaways—the mate, Mr. Chace, and two men—volunteered to remain on the islet. Captain Pollard promised that if he reached a port or was picked up he would send a vessel to take them off. He divided his 10 men between the two boats, and pathetically farewelled by the three island campers, set out again -on the ocean. The boats soon parted company. We shall follow the fortunes of the captain's boat; the other was picked up by a ship after many days.

For that poignant story of suffering I shall take now the narrative of Captain Pollard, given on board the American brig Pearl, at Kaiatea Island, in the Society Group, more than two years later; His hearers were Mr. Tyerman and Mr. Bennett, of the London Missionary Society, who were on a cruise of inspection of the mission stations in the Pacific. Mr. Bennett took down the melancholy tale told by the captain, who was an unlucky man—as he described himself —if ever there was one, for he had just lost another ship. "With a very small morsel of biscuit for each and a little water," said Pollard, "we again ventured out on the the Pacific. The Fatal Lot. "When this supply was spent what could we do? We looked at each other with horrid thoughts in-our minds, but we held our tongues. I am sure that we loved one another as brothers all the time, and yet our looks told too plainly what must be done. "We cast lots, and the fatal one fell on my poor cabin boy. I started forward instantly and cried out: 'My lad. my lad, if you. don't, like your lot I'll shoot: the first man that touches you!'

"The poor emaciated boy hesitated a minute or two; thc«:, quietly laying his head on the gunwale, he said: 'I like it as well as any other.' He was soon dispatched, and nothing of him left.

"I think, then," eaid the unhappy captain, "another man died of himself, and him, too, we ate. But I can tell you no more. My head is on fire at the recollection. I hardly know what I say."

The Rescue.

After many days of horror and despair, when Pollard and his one surviving companion were lying on the bottom of the boat too weak to rise, scarcely able to raise a hand, a vessel hove in sight. She lowered a boat and took them on board. She was the Dauphin, a Xantucket whaler.

Captain Pollard's first thought now was to rescue his chief mate and the two men left on Ducie Island. Tlie news was passed round among the .ships seen, and a vessel sailed in search of the castaways and brought them awav safelv.

The mate narrated the story of his life on the lone' island since December 26, 1820. the date on which the boats sailed away. He and his two men lived mostly on small birds which they caught in the low trees at night, and "thev got several turtles which came ashore on tlie beach at night. A shower of r«in relieved occasionally their thirst, and saved their lives. They got the water in holes in rocks after the showers; and there was also a breach spring of saltish water. Kxploring the island, they found eight human skeletons in a rocky cave. Xo doubt there were the remains of shipwrecked sailors. The skeletons were side by aide, as if the poor fellows had lain down and died together.

In this desperate condition, only saved from death by showers of rain at intervals. Mr. Chace and his comrades lived on the island until April 5. 1821. They were searching for food and water when they heard a gun. and looking out seaward to their joyful surprise beheld a ship. She lowered a boat, and after some trouble because of the surf they were taken off. and with inexpressible gladness set foot on a vessel's deck again. The ship was the Surrey, commanded by Captain Raine. The rescued sailors were most kindly treated, and soon their health and strength were restored. They had endured great privations, but had not then been called upon to suffer the terrible ordeal of the sailore in the boats. The Surrey landed them at Valparaiso.

To return to Captain Pollard. He closed his sorrowful story, surely tlie most painful in the history of all the I Pacific whaleship9, by describing in a tone of profound despondency how he returned :to the United States and got command of another ship, but lost her by wreck off the Hawaiian Islands. Xow he was utterly ruined, he told his friends on board the brig Pearl, as she lay in the lagoon «t Raiatea. "Xo owner will ever trust me with a whaleship again, for all will say 1 am an unlucky man."