PATIENTS OF THE OCEAN.

Cromwell Argus, Volume L, Issue 2645, 20 October 1919, Page 7

PATIENTS OF THE OCEAN.

EVERY SHIP THAT IS SUNK IS NOT LOST. She looked a pitiful thing, lying there, half heeled over with the tide washing in and out of a great hole in her side. At her blackened twisted davits bung the charred remains j of what had been efficient life-boats; her funnel was blistered and scorched, and all her deck-fittings showed that she had been the victim of a devasting tire. The fifteen-foot hole in her side was the place where a U-boat had managed to get his shot in while she was in mid-Channel ; the scars on her bow plating were caused by the wire hawsers of the salvage tug that almost miraculously appeared as soon as her benzine cargo caught fire, and hauled her to practical safety in her present bed. In the old days before the war she would not have been oven a “commercial venture’’ in the salvor’s eyes now, when every ton of shipping was all-important, she was looked upon as a most promising patient. This was evident from the fact that no less than three sturdy salvage tugs were dancing attention upon her day and night, letting their divers and hull repairers take advantage of every low tide in the fight against the Hun and against Nature. The chief of the salvors, who was a quiet man in the uniform of a commander R.N.R., said little, but what orders he gave were carried out to the. very letter, for upon him depended the success of the work that never ended. His satellites were men of rough aspect and profane tongues, ready to dare any risk if they were required to do so, and at all times full of vigor and energy. The salvage tugs were simply smothered in weird and wonderful appliances —great air and water pumps, chests of tools, huge pieces of plating. And, at the next low tide, the larger of them edged herself in towards the wreck till their hulls were all but rubbing, and, getting her derricks to work, slung one of those latter “patches’’—as they were called —into position. Divers, looking like strange denizens of the undersea world, hauled it straight, and, working under water, managed to bolt it over the great jagged hole in the hull before the tide came back. And this, time there was no laughing gurgle of the water as it mocked man’s efforts to hold it back. The ship was almost whole once more. Then the second tug came alongside,, and also used her derricks. This time she dropped over a monstrouslooking piece of machinery that was like the refuse of an iron foundry attached to a couple of huge pipes, the longest of which stuck out of the sea surface, and was kept from running away by a couple of stout cables, which the watcher immediately and instinctively knew to be electric leads. This was one of the marvellous submersible electric pumps which are making merchant naval history. Cut a hole, or find a hole big enough for it to go into, and you can safely say that it will keep any vessel not actually filling herself from the ocean clear of water. Ten minutes later the surface of the sea commenced to boil, and out of the round pipe-end sticking up from the sea water gushed out in a spout a foot wide. It described a beautiful arc in the air, and then fell gurgling back to its parent sea. The submersible pump had started its work inside the flooded ship’s hold. Suddenly the stream ceased, and the pipe emitted hollow groans. “Suction blocked !’’ cried the man who attended the electric switch. A man in a monstrously bloated suit, wearing a copper helmet, appeared on the tug’s deck, strapped leaden-soled boots to his feet, and slid down a ladder while his comrades pumped air through his pipes. The iron spout ceased to deliver water—then, with a roar of triumph, the silvery gout hurled itself upward again, and the diver reappeared. Black was his originally khaki suit —black and slimy, and the copper helmet was of the same sable hue. Immediately a hosepipe swished its full power over him, and the slime sluiced away. And for three days and nights the pumping went on, and the divers occasionally descended to clear a sluice or to strengthen a bulkhead that threatened to collapse under the water pressure. Then, as her holds emptied, the great ship exerted her natural buoyancy, and began to rise.

First her deck-rails showed above the water at high tide, then the top of the “patch,” and presently her waterline. Then, with joyful bootings' the tugs passed tjreir wire hawsers and towed the 10,000-ton patient to the , bed in dry clock reserved for her, where the skilled surgeons, whose tools are hammer and drill, and whose medicines arc steel plates and rivets, would take her in hand complete the work of the salvors —of the men who, once more, had cheated both the Hun in the Untcrseeboote and the hardly less ruthless ocean.

MOTHER OF THOUSANDS. The destruction wrought on all but the hardest wood by the white ant, or termite, is not surprising when a few facts are known of its prolific character. ’ A nest, some six feet in height, was found in the Tropics, and about Ift. below the level of the ground w'as a conical mound of hard earth. Inside this dwelt the queen-mother. After careful observation she was found to lay 9,120 eggs in an hour. On account of her great size she was unable to leave her cell, her only function being to lay eggs. George Lovatt, ,who is described as (he heaviest man in Great Britain, turns the scale at thirty-four stone, and is forty-eight years of age. Wife ; “Could yon let me have a little money, dear ?” Hubby ; “About how little ?”