DANGER AT SEA

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 138, 7 December 1935, Page 8

DANGER AT SEA

CARGOES SAILORS FEAR

FRCyVI OIL TO GRAIN

A ship's hold, to the man in the street, beyond being the obvious place where goods are stowed, is a dark hole of mystery; to the sailor it is the source of some of the weirdest adventures and thrills the sea can produce ill its tantrums (writes a ship's officer in an overseas paper). "Beware of green coffee!" an old seaman once warned me in my apprenticeship days. It sounded like a saltyarn—such as being sent to the carpenter for a "long stand," or to the chief engineer for "a tin of tartan paint"! But a shipload of green coffee, next to guano, is the most obnoxious of all. On long voyages the smell, which pervades every corner of the ship, never leaves the nostrils; it steals everyone's appetite arid frequently becomes so appalling that illness results. Recently, while carrying a deck cargo of steel rails to Buenos Aires, the ship in which I was navigating officer became almost unmanageable because the compass, most sensitive of instruments, deserted its allegiance to the Magnetic North and persisted in gyrating dizzily towards the greater attraction of the steel cargo. Fortunately, the dance of doom which the compass indulged in did not end so disastrously for: us as it did for the crew of the King Bleddyn, which piled itself up on a submerged rock near Robben Island, in the^Table Bay waters. She was carrying a cargo of rails for the South African railways from a Gulf of Mexico port, and during the voyage the navigators were almost driven crazy by the weird deflection of her compasses. The Glasgow steamer Cara, with a cargo of timber from Riga, completed one of the most adventurous voyages ever undertaken on the North Sea. Thousands of feet of timber were stacked on her deck, and heavy seas washing over on the weather side so waterlogged'the wood that the boat developed a terrifying list. Only "clever handling brought the Cara safely to the Clyde. So desperate .was the position that the lifeboats were kept ready for swinging out at a moment's notice. DEADLY CHEESE. Fruit is one of the deadliest cargoes a seaman can be asked to work. It may look innocent enough growing on trees or lying on your plate, but when hundreds of tons are gathered together anything can happen down below. Fruit emits fermenting gases as poisonous as the deadliest chemical preparations. Bananas, dates, and apples have rendered entire crews drunk with the fumes, and in several instances tragerdy has resulted. On one occasion half the crew of a small tramp were in danger of being arrested as "drunk"—until it was discovered that they were staggering about under the influence of gas from cider apples! Other poisonous cargoes include onions, cheese, and chemical manures. The young fourth officer of the Suffolk was some time ago awarded the Royal Humane Society's bronze medal and certificate for gallantry in rescuing, at great risk, the chief and second officers who had been overcome in a hold stacked with cheese. Mention petroleum to a sailor and listen to his marine reply. In stormy weather a tanker is safer than most vessels, but in collision there is always the danger of combustion from the sparking of steel against steel. All the bonus which oil-tanker sailors earn —which is known as "blood-money"— is not worth tuppence in an emergency like that. The same is true of gunpowder, nitro-glycerine, vitriol, and liquid ammonia. Cotton is another danger. ' Wheat, or grain, has probably caused as many sea-wrecks as hidden rocks, typhoons, or collisions. It has certainly provided more adventure on the high seas than any other type of cargo. One of the most memorable, in itself an epic, was the loss of the Antinoe, at the beginning of 1926, wh*en the American liner President Roosevelt rescued the crew and carried them to Plymouth. SHIFTING GRAIN. Grain looks good; it is clean, the handling and stowing presents little trouble and takes no time—but a loose mass of thousands of tons of grain under deck contains terror in its hidden movements. The holds of ships carrying loose cereals are partitioned off with heavy wooden bulwarks running fore and aft; the smallest chink, in the wooden wall is packed tightly with oakum before the loading begins. In heavy weather a loose cargo has a terrifying habit of shifting from one side of the stowage-place to the other, just like water slopping in an unsteady tumbler. But for those wooden safeguards the whole mass might slide to one side as the ship rolled—and when that happens the bottom of the ocean t is the next port of call for everyone on board. Even with these precautions disaster overtakes grain vessels. A rent in a hatch tarpaulin, a stoved-in cover, a smashed deck-ventilator, or a leak in the skin of the ship will allow water to reach the cargo. When that happens a freighter is doomed. Water and wheat don't mix well together—add the heat of the holds and you have an explosive as deadly as dynamite. The wet grain starts swelling until no power on this earth will keep it within confined limits. The gas blows the thatch-covers sky high; and swelling grain has many times burst ships asunder and ripped steel bulkheads like paper.