FORGOTTEN SHIPS ON THE BEACHES OF THE WORLD

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 60, 8 September 1934, Page 25

FORGOTTEN SHIPS ON THE BEACHES OF THE WORLD

On the beaches of Kerguelen, in the South Indian Ocean midway between the Cape and Australia, sealing and whaling crews have found the wreckage of years piled high. Some of; it is obviously timber and deck cargoes washed overboard in gales; but much is, beyond doubt, the bones of forgotten ships. Kerguelen was visited during the search for the Danish training ship Kobenhavn, which disappeared several years ago, but it was impossible at the time to make a thorough investigation' of this graveyard, says the "New York Times." There are remote places in the world so little explored that they may provide solutions to old mysteries of the'sea. The discovery made in a lonely creek in Tierra del Fuego by the; British cruiser Glasgow is ; an example. During the World War the Glasgow was searching for the German cruiser Dresden near this peninsula, ,when she found the wreck of a Nova Scotian wooden barque reported missing fifty years before. The skeletons of the crew wero lying on the barque's rotting decks. More remarkable still was the solution, after nearly forty years, of the disappearance of two French exploring frigates, Boussole and Astrolabe, in the Pacific Ocean. La Perouse, the commander of the expedition, and 222 men, loft Botany Bay, Australia, in 1788 and were not heard of again, in spite of many until a British ship in 1827 discovered a crested silver plate, a part of a ship's stern, and other relics ou the then little known island of Vanikoro. La Perouse . and nearly all his men had been either drowned or massacred by savages. Other, lonely islands have thrown light on mysterious sea disasters. A French, transport became a total loss on Tromelin Island, a mere sandspit

partly covered witn Dush and trees, far' from the Indian Ocean fishing tracks. Twenty years went by. Then the master of a passing vessel sent a. boat ashore. Two wretched coloured women were found. All the rest had died. These women had lived alone on a diet consisting mainly r of shellfish. '.-, The steamer Waikato in 1899 was' given tip for lost. Her engines had broken down when she was well to ; the south, of Cape Agulhas, bound for New and for three and a half months she drifted in an east-south-easterly direction. By chance the steamship Asloun found her and towed her to port. Derelicts have drifted right across the-Atlantic; some have made a circuit and returned almost to the positions where they were abandoned. In the days of sail many of these dead ships menaced the North Atlantic, trade routes;- even today the pilot charts record them. There is no telling how long may be the career of a wooden ship without a crew. The whale Jennie of Portland, reported as missing, is said to have remained afloat for thirty-seven years in the last e ; eutury. Skeletons and the log-book told the story of mutiny and the starvation of the survivors. ' The wooden schooner Wyer G. Ser■gent, loaded with mahogany, was abandoned off Cape Hatteras in a "sinking condition.'' Two years later she was still afloat, her movements . having made a maze on the chart; This ghost of the ocean-must have,drifted at least SOOO miles before she vanished, . Provision depots are maintained on many remote outlying islands, and scores of castaways have made use-of them. The New Zealand Government has gone a step, further • by placing guardians on several remote islands to the southward where shipwrecks have often occurred. . ■■ ;