“LAST PLACE ON EARTH”

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 September 1931, Page 3

“LAST PLACE ON EARTH”

TRAGIC MIDWAY ISLAND. Midway Island, with au American cable station 1,500 miles north-west of Honolulu, on the Great Circle route to the Far East, is aptly described as “the last place on earth-’ An atoll, Midway is not endowed with any of the gifts. of Nature that make South Sea atolls tolerable. The cocoanut palm, -lusty and rakish glory of the South Seas, withers and dies on this islet. Lying near the northerly limit of the north-west trade winds, five degrees outside the tropics, it (acks the tempering influence of the “trades”; in summer it is- hotter than equatorial islands; in winter bitterly cold. Sharp sand, flying before gales, cuts grass off at the roots, strips bushes of their leaves, and buries all plant life. In 1859 Captain Brooks, of the Hawaiian barque Gambia, stumbled on Midway, a coral reef enclosing thirtysix square miles pf water. He took possession of the three islets of the group, each a square mile in urea, and composed of gleaming sand, except for a few clumps of stunted vegetaton. In 1870 the United States vessel Saginaw was wrecked on a small island fifty miles to the west. Then the United States ‘Government and the shipping company washed their hands

of Midway. Sixteen years after the schooner General Siegel, bound from Honolulu on a shark-fishing expedition, was wrecked and her crew of seven became castaways. The captain and one of the crew died; the first mate, a Dane named Jorgensen, was accused of murdering them. His four surviving shipmates abandoned him, destroyed two boats, and sailed in a remodelled Japanese sampan for the Mrashall Islands, 1,500 miles away, arriving safely after an astounding voyage of twenty days. Jorgensen made friends with a rat, the only one on all Midway, and dismantled some abandoned coal lighters, building a verandah to his hut from their timbers. When the winter rains came he huddled indoors and babbled to the rat, which he had tamed. An unlovely paradox, he yet observed one day in seven as Sunday. Deliverance

came six months after his shipmates left. The British barque Wandering Minstrel, also a shark-fisher, sighted the island and the crew saw Jorgensen desperately signalling with his rag of a shirt. The vessel drove on the reef and broke up; there were now thirty castaways on Midway. Several died, some of them committing suicide. Three essayed to flee from Midway. They sailed and vanished. Jorgensen and the second mate, Cameron’, built a schooner from the abandoned lighters; before she sailed storms damaged her and more foremast hands died.* Eight months passed. Then Jorgensen, Cameron, and a Chinese boy departed in a boat for Honolulu. Bad weather compelled them to steer for the Marshalls, where they arrived after forty-three days at sea—too much of a strain for Jorgensen, whose reason left him.

A fishing schooner, five months later, found the Midway survivors. The master contended that several thousand dollars had been taken ashore from the Wandering Minstrel; he'charged the survivors that amount to take them to Honolulu- Robert Louis Stevenson happened Io bd in Honolulu at the time;.he heard about the extraordinary bargain, and used the incident in the plot and Midway in the setting of his novel, “The Wrecker.” For eleven years Midway was undisturbed. In 1900 the United States warship Iroquois conducted a hydrographic survey, and the Nero took soundings for the establishment of the transpacific cable. In 1903 the first message flashed undfer the ocean. It was relayed by, a staff at Midway. With endless patience and cunning • man has since been subduing Nature, making a square mile of shifting sand habitable, and playing golf in leisure hours with balls tinted red. »ft®. 6/ '