RESEARCH SHIP’S QUEER CARGO

Hawera Star, Volume LII, 3 September 1932, Page 14

RESEARCH SHIP’S QUEER CARGO

/"\NE of the strangest cargoes ever j landed in London was taken i there by the Royal Research ship, William Seoresby, 700 tons, which returned recently after spending 19 months in the South Atlantic and Antarctic. She had on board bottled mud, sea-snails, plankton (microscopic life), pickled fish, and seaweed. Apart from being battered by icebergs, squeezed by pack ice, nearly overturned in a gale, and blown 500 miles off the course, the voyage was reported by all aboard as being “uneventful.” “Uneventful,” said Stoker James, of Portsmouth, “unless you count the queer case of Molly, the ship’s cat. She was shipped aboard before we left London —a present from 'the wife of the bo’sun, and a rare good climber, j “We put in at a little harbour in the! Strait of Magellan—and there Molly vanished. In my oinion some of the Patagonians kidnapper her.” -

Mud, Sea Snails and Pickled Fish

The crew found the long periods at sea anything but monotonous. ‘l‘ Our great sport was . scientific,” said one of the seamen, “marking whales. We shot a little harpoon from a gun and branded the whales on their tails, so that if later on anyone caught them they would read the markings and know that was a Teward for sending in particulars of" the spot where a whale was caught, and what food it had eaten. Then we went on the ice, and the chief officer shot a sealeopard. ’ ’

The most important work was a survey of the remarkable Humboldt current along the coast of Peru. Not only sailor's but meteorologists -will be grateful for the work done in this connection, for the 'Humboldt current has a profound effect on the climate along the West Coast of South America as :ar north as the Equator.