ACROSS ATLANTIC

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 15, 18 January 1930, Page 20

ACROSS ATLANTIC

LONE ADVENTUEER

CLERK'S AMAZING FEAT

Muller had never been on the ocean before. He was not a navigator. He was a grocery clerk in Berlin. But he wanted to cross the Atlantic, so he bought some books on how to sail and studied them. Then he went to Hamburg and bought a boat.

As the captain and crew rolled into one, the mate, navigator, deckhand, steward, and cabin boy—Paul Muller in the good "ship" Aga caught the breezes of Hamburg Harbour and nosod out towards the south-west. That was 6th ljuly, 1928.

He cruised along the coasts of Germany, Prance, Spain, Portugal, and North-West Africa, to the Canary Islands. On 14th February, 1929, ho left the islands and headed into the Atlantic. "Good-bye for ever," they shouted at him as he left. On 24th April, lean, hungry, thirsty, bronzfid, and buffeted, he reached Fortuno Island, about 330 niilss north of Cuba.

Ho sailed down to Cuba, where ho was received as a conquering hero (says the "Public Ledger"). He next went up the Florida coast, and was blown ashore at New Smyrna. But he repaired the boat and headed north again.

A storm caught him off Charleston, S.C., and again he was blown ashore, this time with such force that the hardy Aga was crushed. Believing he was far from the mainland, he sadly burned the wreck of his boat to attract a rescue. •

Helen of Troy, they say, launched a thousand ships full of men ready to do and die for her. It was Agatha Garvinski, a governess of Berlin, who launched the Aga (Muller's pet name for Agatha) on its voyage. "You see," Paul explains, "I wanted to get married. "We wero both poor. I decided to try tho voyage to America in the little boat so I could write a book about the trip and get money enough for the farm." Mullor had enough experiences to write a book. He saw enough oceanic geography to turn any landlubber into an old salt, and came ' several times very close to the doors of Davy Jones's i locker.

The Aga was IS feet overall, about six feet beam, and carried a 14-foot mast. The sail was a simple triangular sheet. The boat had a tiny cabin, which rose about two. feet above the deck in the forward part. A covered hatch in the centre of the small rear deck provided the other opening into the tiny hull. The water and food were stored m the stern, and Muller had his bunk, compass, and papers in the cabin. He carried no navigation instrument except a compass. He had no way of determining his latitude and longitude except by dead. reckoning, performed with chart and compass. He carried only 35 gallons of water and food for ten weeks when he pushed off for the ocean crossing. Friends in Hamburg and Berlin aided him in preparing for the trip. They helped him get supplies and stores. They wished him a good trip. But they were unanimous in telling him that he possessed various degrees of insanity. After the eighth week Muller became fearful that his supplies would not hold out. There was no way to tell his latitude and longitude, how far he had gone, nor bow closely he had held on the true course. He apportioned his food in small bits and by exerting himself as little as possible prepared to fight hunger and thirst— enemies more deadly than storms. This was his menu: Food, about the equivalent of two biscuits a day; and a little less than, a quart of water a day. The storm that wrecked the Aga on the South Carolina coast near Charleston was ono of those sudden miniature hurricanes that sweep up from the south-easterly direction, last a few hours, and die out. The small craft caught the full force of it and was »wept ashore. The hull of the boat was crushed. Paul felt that his adventure was over. Like a sportsman who sadly but mercifully shoots a thoroughbred horse who has broken his leg, Muller set fire to the Aga. It was dusk. He reasoned that some one would see the flames and come to his rescue. The log book he had kept, the charts, compass, and papers, Paul placed in a tin box. He hid the rest of the effects he had saved in a sand bank. When no help came he waded across a shoal to another island. Here he could make out the dim outline of what seemed to be a house far up the inlot. Holding the box above the water with his left hand, he' started swimming towards the

house. A Federal Prohibition agent, Fritz Strobel, was sleuthing around Kaiwah Island, where MuUer had .been stranded land had seen the fire, Strobel was in

an open rowboat and started toward the fire. Before he reached the scene he came upon Muller, swimming along and pulled him into the boat. They went back to the charred wreck and stayed all night. The next morning they were picked up by a ship boun" for Charleston. The citizens of Charleston rallied to Paul Muller's support in a hearty fash: ion; A hotel took him in as an official guest. The Chamber of Commerce launched a movement to build Mm a new boat, and when the Aga H. was completed it was presented to him during the celebration of the opening of the huge bridge over the Cooper Eiver. Agatha Garvinski gave up being a governess in Berlin to join her lover in Charleston. The city gave them a public wedding 'on the 29th day of August. Mayor Thomas P. Stoney gave the bride away.