OCEAN MYSTERIES

Evening Star, Issue 21077, 14 April 1932, Page 6

OCEAN MYSTERIES

SHIPS WITHOUT CREWS MANY PROBLEMS DEFY SOLUTION The discovery in a land-locked bay on the South American coast of a fullmasted sailing vessel, every clue to the identity of which seems to have been carefully destroyed, adds another to the long list of queer mysteries of the sea which seem to defy all solution (writes Captain Kaye Charterson). Remnants of canvas still attached to the yards would seem to indicate that the ship came to rest in the spot where it has now been found at full sail, and there are evidences which point to this having taken place thirty •or forty years ago. Nowhere is there a thing that will reveal the name or nationality of this craft, nor is there the slightest evidence of the fate of the crew. Everything aboard was shipshape, there was no sign of anything like a mutiny, and unbroached stores show there was no reason in that direction for the crew', from captain to cabin boy. to leave their ship. Yet they vanished, every man jack of them. Strange, indeed, are the annals of the sea. A steamer, the Sorella, left Cardiff one evening bound for the port of Barcelona with a cargo of coal. That was the last that was seen of her or her crew. A liner ploughing through mid-Atlantic one day picked up a wireless S.O.S. which purported to come from the Sorella, and in accordance with the fine tradition of the sea the captain decided to steam full speed ahead for the point from which the call for help had come. Before the liner got very far on this mission of help, however, a second message came out of the ether. It was from a Spanish steamer called the Savon, and informed the liner that there was now no need for assistance, as the distressed Sorella was being towed to port by the Spanish vessel.

When the liner got in her skipper naturally made inquiries, and was stupefied at the result. For the captain of the Spanish ship made it clear that he had not only never seen the Sorella in his life, but had not rendered assistance or on the voyage even seen any distressed vessel. The mystery of the Sorella and the wireless calls to the liner has never been solved to this day. Then there was the queer instance of the American sailing vessel J. Hopkins. Fishermen casting their nets near the Virgin Islands one day observed her away out to sea, all sails set, and were struck after a time at the aimless course she seemed to be pursuing. It puzzled them so much that they decided to investigate, and after a long chase were able to board the ship.

There was not a soul aboard her. Everything above deck and below was in perfect order, and the vessel was in perfect condition. But the crew had vanished, without even troubling to pack up or take with them any of their dunnage. There was no sign to suggest that they had fled the ship in anything like hasty panic; but a missing ship’s boat showed how they had gone. No trace was ever found of what had happened to them, and the most searching investigation failed to bring to light anything that would give a reason for their dramatic abandonment of their ship.

When the steamer Triton was discovered wallowing in the trough of the waves, and glasses showed there was no guiding hand in her bridge house, the captain of the ship making this discovery resolved to send a boat away to find out the meaning. The boarding party found there was but one occupant of the Triton—a mad dog, which raced furiously round and round the deck. The mystery grew when the animal had been secured. There was plenty of food and fresh water placed for the dog, but these had been untouched, so that it was not starvation that had sent the animal into its demented state. But the terror that had caused it had also apparently caused captain and crew to leave the ship and take to the only thing that was missing—a small boat normally swung amidships. Neither it nor the missing men were ever discovered.

Beyond man’s understanding aro tho mysteries of the rolling deeps.