DERELICT SHIPS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 1 November 1924, Page 7

DERELICT SHIPS.

ABANDONED VESSELS MENACE MANY OTHERS. The average life of a derelict ship is about thirty days, but in exceptional instances derelicts pursue tlieir lonely voyages for months or even years. • March, 1888, will long be remembered for the frightful gal© on tli© American seaboard, in which 138 vessels were blown ashore, and about twenty abandoned by their crews. Among the latter was the three-masted schooner H. L. White, abandoned off Delaware Bay on March 13. She did not sink, but started off across the Atlantic on a voyage which lasted ten months and ton days, during which she covered over 5000 miles and was sighted no rev. er than forty-five Dimes. On Janurry, 1889 ’ she weilt ashore in the Hebrides. Even this record was lie a ten by the Ada Cummings, which, starting‘from near New Jersey, crossed the Atlantic to Ireland and, turning south, travelled as far a$ the Equator. Drifting westward through the Sargasso Sea, she finally went ashore on the coast of Colombia after a lonely cruise lasting no less than 549 davs. All records^f or drift were beaten by the Fannv Wolston, which circled the Aorth Atlantic for nearly four years after her crew had left her. Twice she wa s boarded and set on fire, yet still she refushed to sink. At last she was sighted off Cape May and destroyed. She had then been afloat for 1408 days. .At any time there are at least fifty ef these perils to navigation drifting in the North Atlantic-, and Avere it not that ocean currents carry most of them to certain snots, such as the neighbourhood of Sable Island, the danger would be much greater than it is