DANGER AT SEA

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 December 1935, Page 12

DANGER AT SEA

CARGOES SAILORS FEAR A ship’s hold, to tho 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 01. some of the weirdest adventures and thrills the sea can produce in its tantrums (writes a ship’s officer, in an overseas paper). “Beware of green coffee!” an old |fie;>nian once warned me in my apprenticeship days. It sounded like a saltyarn—such as being sent, to the carpenter for “a tin of tartan paint”! But a shipload of green coffee, next to guano, is tho 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 and frequently becomes so appalling that illness results. Recently, while carrying a deck cargo of steel rails to Blienos Aires, tho ship in which I was navigating officer became almost unmanageable because tho compass, most sensitive cf 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 dopm which tho 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 Smith 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.

Tho Glasgow steamer Cara, with a cargo of timber from Riga, completed eno of the most adventurous voyages ever undertaken on the North Sea. Thousands of feet of timber w ; ere 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 tho 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 efiough 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 tragedy 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 cargos, include onions, cheese, and chemical manures. , The young fourth officer bf the Suf- , folk was some time ago awarded tne Royal Humane Society’s bronze medal 1 and certificate for gallantry in rescuing, at great risk, the chief and : second officers who had been over- , come in a hold stacked, with cheese. Mention petroleum to a sailor ana ( listen to his marine reply. In stormy , weather a tanker is safer than most , vessels, but in ,collisions there is al- ■ ways the danger of combustion from j tho sparking of steel against steel. < Al 1 the bonus which oil-tanker sailois ( earn—which is known as “blood- ■ money”—is not worth tuppence in an emergency like that. The same . is i true of gunpbwder, nitro-glyceiine, 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 adventui 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 U»b. when 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 gram under deck contains terror in its hidden movements. Tho 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 tonifying habit ol' shifting from one side of the stowage-place to the other, just like water slopping in an unsteady tumbler. But for those wooden safeguards tho v.'hole mass might slide' to one side as the ship rolled —and when that happens the bottom of the ocean is the next port of call for everyone or. 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 cf the ship rvill allow water to reach the cargo. Whc-n 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. Tiro 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.