Barquentine Took 151 Days On Sydney-Gilberts VoyAge

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 164, 13 July 1945, Page 4

Barquentine Took 151 Days On Sydney-Gilberts VoyAge

IF the crew had mutinied, killed captain and scuttled the ship it is | probable that the skipper would rr.ereiy have mentioned it in passing. . . . "That was when they killed the caotain." For the skipper had that way of telling a storv Actually it didn't get to that extreme. But what a story the skipper had to tell for all that! One hundred days out of port . . . the ship becalmed, with an equatorial sun bla'zing on the iron deck . . . the onlv food rice, boiled in the brackish bottom - of - the - tank water, with pickles added . . . bitter animosities growing among the officers and crew . . . and then days and days more of it. calms and adverse winds, until at last the voyage was completed from Svdnev to the Gilberts, in 151 days. Fiction material, actually, with the teller, Captain L. C. 'Bob) Bouiton, master of the lilaui Pomare, casting his mind back to not-so-long-ago 1917. and laying out the facts as he might plot a course on a chart. And it might have seemed as dry in the teiiing. but for the quirk of humour, the old sailorman twist of a phrase, that kept the imagination fertile; peopled the Chinese-owned, threemasted barquentine. Alexa. with rugged humanity, and gilded her slow-sailing days with drama. Outward Bound for Makin The storv had its beginning in March. 1917. at Sydney, with the Alexa outward bound, with general stores for the island station of On Chong, Chinese merchant, of George Street, Svdnev. at Butaritari —"sometimes called Makin Island"—in the Gilberts. A distance of "between 2000 and 3000 miles, depending on the wind." With a eift for skipping the nonessential. Captain Boulton—who was second mate on that passage—had the Alexa ninety miles off her landfall in 35 davs, just normal sailing with a ship that was "as slow as time." And then trouble developed. Just adverse winds, and the equatorial current that set her to westward, up to five degrees north, 300 miles north of Makin. The counter current was not sufficient to offset this pull; and then the master. Captain R. Sinclair, "as fine a seaman as there was in the Pacific," decided to run into the North-East Trades and make an easting ... ■ Sailorman language that ... and what magnificent condensclion of hot. wearv days and nights on monotony and frustration! "That entailer! running up to 30deg. north (1300 miles north of Makin). By this time we were short of stores, water principally, and the only thing edible in the cargo was rice. That, boiled in the dregs of the tank water, with pickles spread on it to take off the taste, soon got monotonous. Everywhere we turned there were adverse winds with mixed weather. "Eventually we sighted the island again. 149 days out. There was a Canadian at the wheel, by name of Duffy., and he said to the Old Man. "Why don't you send a boat in to get some food?' No two of us were speakin? to one another by that time Figrhts on the Main Hatch And that is where we go back again to those equatorial days, with their heat and monotony and little water and only rice to eat. Men whe normally lived fairly well (Captain ' Boulton has a high regard for Chinese owners; the Alexa was beautiful!}- kept) were developing scurvy, and tempers were ragged There was no tobacco either, for stores had been pillaged at Sydney and that didn't help. And there was no kerosene for the lights either. "There were fights on the mair hatch every night .. I was in quit? a few of them myself ... You didn'l

iget a mate's berth in sail in those, days for brains but for sheer weight of "metal ..." The skipper grinned suddenly at a passing memory ... "I remember passing a remark to one fellow about him getting a man's wages for a boy's work. He hauled off and smoked me one on the eye before I could duck ... It was a beautiful black eye ... "The skipper would say. 'Can't vou do something to stop that fighting?' and I would say 'Stop it? I'll referee ill' By the time we sighted the island the"skipper wasn't speaking to me or the mate, C. P. Winn, of Sydney." And so we're back-off Maktn again. with Duffy asking his question about' a boat to go ashore ... To row twenty miles to the weather side of the island, with its lines of jagged reefs, and with a heavy ground swell running. It was no place to put a boat ashore, said Captain Sinclair: but Bouiton said he thought it could be done. Would he do it. askedj the Captain, and there was nothing else for Bouiton to do but to agree. Duffv agreed to go with him. and also another A.8., Alec Peterson, later master of a Noble Explosive Companv's boat, running in and out of Auckland. (Peterson, who used to ask Bouiton to play tunes to him on the violin, and who had quite a , reputation as a guitar player him- ! - <=elf) The three of them, all big ! men, would all take a turn at the ; ? oars of the 12-footer, two pulling 'and one spelling. They were equip- , iped with a half-bottle of whisky. ', some cooked rice and a quart of rusty i , water.

"If you don't like it don't go, said Captain Sinclair, in the last moment before they departed. "I'd Sooner Drown Than Starve" "I'd as soon drown as starve to death," said Boulton; and off they started. It was 7.30 or 8 a.m. when they left the ship, and it was 6.30 that night when they got in towards the shore, at a place where they found landing was impossible. Peterson said he had enough strength to pull back to the ship, but Boulton looked at his badly blistered hands, at the scurvy-caused sores on his arms, and decided-he couldn't make it. Let them row another six miles to Flinck Point, he suggested. And so they pulled along the coast, land two miles along they saw what ! appeared to be an. opening in the reefs. "We decided to give it a go. but when the first line oi breakers dropped behind, the rocks stuck up

.like teeth all about us. I wasnt scared—oh. no ! I clear forgot the j kedge anchor, and we got broadside j on. 'Grab your life-belt '.' I called to Duffy, who couldn't swim. 'This is where we get off!' But then, suddenly, without any help on our part. the boat was through the rocks and i upon the beach, stern first. \\ e ha-dly got our feet wet." After that there was a four-mile waik to the trading station, with natives chanting about their exploit both in front and behind them, and then there was a mea! of curried chicken and a bed. The nejxt day, equipped with a three-ton cutter, loaded with a 400-gallon tank of water, potatoes, onions and tinned meats, and with the aid of four native boys, they went out through the reef again and to the ship. And the day after, the 151 st since they left Sydney, they were towed into anchorage by a Japanese auxiliaryschooner at a cost of £5. "We had been given up for lost." said Captain Boulton. "But when; I got home to Sydney- my dad, an old retired skipper, said: 'You could! have walked it in the time! And what do you think was for tea that j night? Rice custard!"

All that remains of the Alexa now rests on the beach at Makin Island. She was destroyed by fire, the tragicending to another voyage.