“Ships of Peace” Sail Many Seas.

Hawera Star, Volume L, 14 February 1931, Page 16

“Ships of Peace” Sail Many Seas.

T\ lIE JOHN WILLIAMS V., the latest and most up-to-date of 1 lie little navy ot “ships of peace” supported by the missionary societies of the world, left St. Katharine’s Dock, London, recently, for her work for the London Missionary Society in the South Seas. Suva, Fiji, will be her base foi hoi work of conveying missionaries’ stores, teachers, and pupils between 46 islands where the Society has work. This little schooner is the fifth of her name to commemorate the work of John Williams, the pioneer who was murdered in the New Hebrides in 1839. The first John Williams left London in 1844, and the fourth boat of that name, which is to be broken up, has been at work for 36 years.

Another mission vessel, the Southern Cross, built at Newcastle in 1903,. is approaching the end of her career, for she is to...be replaced by two smaller boats, one based on the Solomon Islands, and the other on the New Heberides in the sphere of work of the Melanesian Mission. The Bishop of Melanesia is spending his time in England after the Lambeth Conference in raisin g° the £25,000 these craft will cost. In these southern waters it is difficult to avoid the £IO.OOO a year the average vessel costs to run, for otherwise missionaries would starve on the meagre foodstuffs on the islands with which these boats form the only regular means of communication, while on every trip they carry children and teachers going or returning to central schools of a higher grade than it is possible to support on the smaller islands.. On the other side of the world. Sir Wilfred Grenfell has again been making the most of the short Labrador summer by visiting the settlements, at many of which other craft never call, on this inhospitable coast in his ship of peace and succour, St rath coma 11. He will visit England in the near future to lecture on this wonderful piece of practical Christianity. His boat is of 84 tons, and Sir Wilfred is her master as well as surgeon and padre.

The northern reaches of this Labrador coast from 1771 were visited each year by a peace ship of the Moravian Missions, until the Harmony, the fifth vessel of that name in this service, ceased her voyages four years ago, for modern conditions made it possible for the missionaries to reach these spots in other vessels.

New John Williams Built.

Southern Gross Soon to End Her Days.

No longer does ’she sail down the Thames each June filled with stores, ranging' from gravestones to dolls, and return in December to sell in London her cargo of furs and fish for the support. of the mission. Nyassa, in Central Africa, may be a lake, But tough seamen will tell you they have been seasick on these waters when they have never been ill elsewhere. The first ship of peace to sail on this lake was the Ilala. which. Dr. Robert Laws, following Livingstone’s steps, took up there in sections in 1875. The Ilala is no more, but the Charles Janson, built at Poplar and relaunched on the lajsie in 1885, is still in commission for the Universities Mission to Central Africa. She sank two years ago, but was salvaged. Her bigger sister, the Chauneey Maples, named after the bishop who lost his life in the lake after 19 years’ service, has been sailing these since 1901. Few craft, including the Government boats, will face the perilous and choppy crossings between the cast and west shores that Ihc Chauneey Maples still regularly performs. This boat, which is 127 feet lang and 18 feet, beam, was originally not only a means of transport. but was used as a floating training college for African students.

The most famous of the larger river craft belonging to the missions was the Peace, in which George Grenfell explored some of the upper reaches of the Congo. All that, remains of her to-day is the iron rods of her deck awning which still support shades in the North London garden of the secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society. The Peace was the gift to the Society of Robert Arthington, the eccentric Leeds philanthropist. Chief of the craft now carrying on her work is the B.M.S. boat, the Grenfell, which works between the mission’s stations on the upper river.

Innumerable are the smaller boats used by practically every missionary society. They sail the creeks of West Africa, the coast of New Guinea, or the rivers of the tropics, like Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s The Thank You. the gift of Sweden’s women.

The missionary-minded congregation of St. Mary’s, Stafford, specialises in helping to provide small launches for this missionary navy, and St. Mary’s, Stafford, craft are “chugchugging” to-day along rivers in Honduras, British Guiana, Burma, Algoma and elsewhere.