MIRU REACHES BOSTON

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26879, 4 November 1952, Page 7

MIRU REACHES BOSTON

Five Bad Storms On 10,000-Mile Voyage

(Rec. 11.40 p.m.) NEW YORK. Nov. 3. A 10,000-mile voyage from Wellington aboard the 48-foot ketch Miru ended in Boston last night for Dr. Thomas Davis* aged 34. his wife. Mrs Lydia Davis, their sons, John, aged 10, and Timothy, aged five, and two £rew members, Messrs Neil Arrow arid William Donovan. After five rugged months at sea Dr. DaiVis arrived late for (he Harvard School of Public Health graduate coutse for which he made the trip. He attributed the delay to ’‘five wicked storms*’ which tofe into the frail craft with winds as high as 70 miles an hour and tossed it oh 60-foot waves. The travellers were welcomed by Brigadier-General James Simmon (Retired). Dean of the School of Public Health; Mr Harold Coolidge, the Director of the Pacific Science Board of the National Academy of SciehCe, and Mr Jack Brown, City of Boston Official Greeter. Casualties on the trip were the children’s pet kittens, Oscar and Stihker. Oscar lost his footing during a storm between Wellington and Rapa Island and was washed overboard. Stihker died apparently from seasickness. However, the boys were presented with two kitteris by the student body of the School of Public Health to replace those lost. Dr. Davis said the last hazard of the trip was the threat of the Mystic river bridge ih Bbston, which threatened to shap the Mirii’s spar. The Miru cleared the bridge by no more than fout inches. Dr. Davis said that one of the five storms encountered by the Miru stripped the deck of everything but the dinghy and the deck ffiop. John had weathered out the second storm with measles.

“The storms were vacation .tithe for the boys,” said Mrs Davis. “The rest of the time they were busy xtfith tiieif ship chores.” Dr. Davis said the trip had given him the chance to gather evidence to support a long-held theory that the Polynesian peoples migrated to Peru and gave rise to the Inca civilisation. This view, he said, was the antithesis of that held by the crew of the famous Kon Tiki which drifted west to east on a balsa raft ih hopes of proving it Was the Peruvians who settled in Polynesia.

Dr. Davis said he had documents Obtained from the Polynesian Islands which described the Peruvian sea coast as he first saw it. He said his theory “is certainly not proven by this trip, but I still feel it has a great deal of merit and I hope some day to publish the.data gathered on the trip.” Mrs Davis said she had an oral agreement with a national magazine to sell it. three stories pri the trip at about 2000 dollars each. For that reason she and Df. Davis Were reluctant to give at close first-person account of the voyage. She did say, however, that their troubles started on the first night—May 31—when they were becalmed. They were buffeted by a gale on the second night. Dr. and Mrs Davis said they planned to stay aboard the Miru until other accommodation could be found.

Mr Donovan is bound for Sweden to study ceramics.