WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 261, 4 August 1928, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

It seems a far cry now to the dayß when pirates roamed tlie Atlantic Ocean, but two books to hand this week make those days not so far away after all. One tells how a New Zealand-bound ship was clnised by a pirate in the forties. The other contains reminiscences of an old-timer whose family built ships for such gentry. Tlie first book is tlie second volume of the late Sir Henry. Brett’s “White Wings,” a valuable chronicle of the sailing ship days in New Zealand. Mention is made in it of the voyage of the Theresa, which arrived at New Plymouth from England in the autumn of 1843. One of her passengers was a young man named Fred Weld, who as Sir Frederick Weld was later Premier of New Zealand and Governor of three other colonies. This ship fell in with one of the last of the Atlantic pirates, and the incident was recorded in a diary by Mr. Weld.

“Our first adventure,” says the diary, “was being chased by a pirate brig showing the Danish colours off the Azores. She hoisted her colours, tacked and stood after us close-hauled to windward. She,came within range, but probably took us for a troopship because of tlie numbers on board, and because as she neared us we began shooting with our rifles. I guessed what she was from her manoeuvres, her look, and the evident anxiety of our captain. . . She fell astern again in a light and baffling wind, which favoured us, in the night, and at daybreak she bore up and went in a different direction. A week or two after that she chased and nearly captured another English vessel. We heard full particulars of her captain and crew and armaments later on. She carried four long guns, and might well have captured us. ... I mention this, as she was, I think, one of the last of the regular pirates on tlie Atlantic. It was said that by the connivance of certain Portuguese authorities she sometimes passed muster as a trader, and made her headquarters and got her supplies at Port Praya.”

The other side of the story comes from Trader Horn's new book, “Harold the Webbed.” Some months ago T.D.H. told the story of his seventy-five-year-old man —in real life Mr. Alfred Aloysius Smith —-suddenly emerged from a Jchannesburg doss-house to become a literary celebrity with an income from his one and only book reported to run at £BOO a week. The book was produced at the suggestion of a South African authoress, Mrs. Ethelreda Lewis, to whom the old man had tried to sell one of the wire toasting-forks he was peddling. He wrote his chapter eacli week, and then he and Mrs. Lewis had a talk about jt, and the book consists of the chapters and the talk. Three books were thus written before any one of them was published, and now the second lias appeared.

Trader Horn’s first book was about the early days or, the Ivory Coast in Africa. Tlie second one is a romance about his ancestors. He is a Lancashire man, and it is the Viking blood that lias made Lancashire, he holds. He paints a tale of a boat load of truant Viking boys who follow their father's fleet south from the Faroe Islands, and after various other adventures witness the landing of Julius Caesar, incidentally sailing across the bows of imperial Caesar’s ship, and sending a hail of arrows aboard. It is an heroic tale told with immense gusto, and in between times the old man discourses with Mrs. Lewis on everything under the sun—including' pirates.

The old man’s forbears were shipbuilders. “Aye the firm’d always done a lot of business supplying ships to South America and other warlike neighbourhood. Any country that’s taken to revolution is a hidden blessing to a shipbuilding family. There’s a silver lining to every little revolution, so-called. Meaning a period of Dago antics with firearms. Leave the straw hat iu the office and proceed to mimic battle armed with gold lace, etcetera, and so forth. Epaulettes, comical fellers, come to fighting. They’d run from a cutlass. ■* .' » *

It seems that the ships built for revolutionary purposes were constructed'with a secret vulnerable spot—old blind great-uncle Horn gave valuable advice about wliere to put that spot. “What’s that, ma'am? Well, of course, business is business. They say all s fair in love or war. And who’s to knowhow a revolution’ll end. You might get nothing from the losing side. But if you sell the knowledge of the vulnerable spot to a customer’s enemy, then you’re fortified against loss. One o’ the old privileges of the trade. The feller that builds the ships is bound to be top dog.”

The American Civil War was a great blow to the whole world of seafaring man—to say nothing of the Horn family. It killed the slave trade. “Might as well take his barrow from a coster as expect shipping families to thrive without the trade. .. No more slavery on the West Coast. No more piracy. Why, even in the ’fifties a man could sign on to certain vessels with the full knowledge that he’d share and share alike with the captain. Same as when we were vikings together. * ❖ ♦

“Aye,” continues Trader Horn, “that North and South affair surely took away some o’ the legitimate rights or the Horns, to say . nothing of Queen Victoria. Rights o piracy, rights o’ foreshore, and a fifth to tlie Queen. He’d always clung to tlie rights of his ancestors, Had Great Uncle Horn, although the contract with Queen had naturally fallen into abeyance, she being of the newer Church, but born lacking in the freebooting instincts of Elizabeth. * * *

“Great Uncle Horn, we are told, helped a good many young fellers to get a start iii life. “Advanced ’em a ship. Say a vessel cost four thousand pounds. He'd let ’em pay it out in pirated booty brought to him. But it wasn't so easy to pay off your debts of honour in those days of respectability. Albert the Good and so on. Verv‘often a poor privateer’d find it difficult to meet, with a piratable ship, aud he’d be obliged to turn towards tlie West: Coast and waylay a slaver. Leave the slaves on the coast an act of humanitarianism if regarded rightly—and take the vessel to Great Uncle Horn.

Sir Frederick Weld seems to have been sadly unaware of tlie disappointment it must have been to Great Uncle Horn when the Theresa got away in 1843. The above extracts will give the reader a taste of the quality that pervades old Trader Horn’s tales. His book is published by Messrs. Jonathan Cape.

Cannibal King’s Daughter: “Say, Pa, there ain’t going to be any dinner. Cook’s eloped with him.”