THE ADVENTURE OF THE MARY ANN.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 14, Issue 1125, 8 February 1870, Page 3

THE ADVENTURE OF THE MARY ANN.

From " Chambera's Journal.") : The Mary Ann was a whaling-vessel, well known in the Tasmanian trade. She had always been accounted a lucky ship. When others had returned without oil, or, as the phrase is, " clean," she had been able to pay her men good wages, or rather to give her men considerable sums of money as their share in the enterprise, for the principle of co-operation, which is now receiving yearly new applications in England, has long been in use among whalers. Men go out on the agreement that they shallrecei ye aparticular specified share of the total proceeds. Sometimes they draw nothing at all at the end of their voyage ; sometimes each sailor receives as much as a couple of hundred pounds. But the general effect of the system is that the sailors engaged in the trade are rather above the average; that each man looks after his fellows, and does his best to aid the common cause. "When they have reached the whaling-ground, there are no idle hands. While one man is specially, appointed to keep a look-out, he is assisted by the eyes of every one on deck ; and when at last the welcome "There she blows ! " is heard, men rush to the boats as readily as school-boys rush out of school. The Maiy Ann had usually been, as I said, a lucky ship, and men would go out in her for a smaller share of the proceeds of the voyage than they would in other vessels. Her crew was usually, therefore, a picked one, and her captain, 7 old Truesalt, as good a whaler as could be met with. And yet the Mary Ann was an old, lumbering, clumsy vessel, which ploughed her way through a heavy sea in as awkward a style as any Dutchman ever builfc. She was of Dutch build. In a gale of wind she had as much notion of riding on the waves as Washington Irving's Tinbroek would have had of dancing a polka. She rolled from side to side until her yards nearly touched the sea, and in her onward course went through the opposing waves instead of over them. When she was young, she had been a Dutch East Indiaman. A curious chapter might be written on the vicissitudes of ships. The Victory is to be laid up like an old Greenwich pensioner. The ship in which Captain Cook, now a hundred years ago, made one of his voyages round the world, was employed only a few years ago as a collier between Newcastle and London. One of the dirtiest whalers which I ever saw, and this only some six or seven years ago, was the Prince Regent, a vessel which had been the yacht of George IV. ; and ifc would be easy to make out quite a long list of vessels now doing the rougher kind of seawork, which in their younger days have seen noble service. The Mary Ann had been out for a ten months' cruise on the whaling-ground which lies all round the great Southern Ocean. This time she had been unfortunate, and her crew were returning in disgust for a new supply of provisions and a few weeks' run on shore. They had reached Storm Bay, and expected within a few hours to anchor off Hobart-town. The wind had fallen, and the men were standing lazily about, looking out for any sign of its rising again. At last one of the sailors called attention to the fact that a boat was putting off from the land. In a few minutes, three men could be made out, and before very long the pilot was on board. It requires some experience of the sensation to understand how men who have been cut off from all human intercourse for many months welcome a new face. The pilot in this case was a very good fellow, talkative and good-natured, and ready to answer, to the best of his ability, all the questions which were showered upon him. But the one absorbing piece of news on which he always fell back, when he could get a moment's leisure from answering questions, was that Black Dick had escaped again, and had gathered round him a gang of the worst bushrangers which the island had yet seen. Black Dick had robbed the mail. Black Dick had tied a dozen different men to trees ; had stopped the coach going to Launceston, and, with the help of his comj panions, had relieved the passengers of ! everything which possessed sufficient value in his eyes to be worth taking ; had threatened that he would attack a man against whom he had a grudge in the very centre of Hobarfc Town ; had been seen to go down the principal street in open day. With one man to help him, he had gone to a ball up the country, and had made his appearance in the midst of the festivity with a rifle at his shoulder ; had then called for silence, a proceeding quite unnecessary ; and had, after graciously promising not to harm anybody if they did not stir, sent the hat round, making a collection of involuntary offerings of money, watches, bracelets, brooches, watch-guards, and even rings. Lastly, the man had gathered together a number of ruffians, almost as bad as himself, and was known to have committed some terrible murders. Parties of police had been out after him for weeks, but they seemed to give him but little trouble. The convict servants scattered throughout the colony were known to give him assistance, and it was not at all unlikely that settlers iv remote districts were ready to purchase their own security at the price of conniving at his presence. The government had offered a reward for him dead or alive. It was believed that he would make the attempt from the northern side of the island to escape over to the mainland ; extra men had therefore been stationed at every likely spot on the north coast, and every ship leaving the colony was subjected to a stricter search. All these particulars the old pilot related while waiting on the poop of the Mary Ana for the approach of the sea-breeze, which, usually setting in about three o'clock in the afternoon, would, in the course of three or four hours, carry them easily to their anchorage. Meantime, from the opposite side of the bay, a long whale-boat had put to sea, and was rapidly moving in the direction of the ship. The pilot was the first to notice her, aud to wonder what she could be. She could not belong to any whaler, because none was in sight. She was not a Hobart-town boat, because she was comiug from the opposite direction. Neither could she belong to Port Arthur, because from the convict settlement no boat belonging to the government would be allowed to make its way round, and there were no private boats. The pilot could only think of the boat belonging to the isthmus which separates Tasman's Peninsula from the mainland. At this isthmus, which is a low sandy neck from, sea to sea, and only some three hundred yards wide, there were stations near to each other, with guards stationed day and night to prevent the escape of convicts from the peninsula. To help them, there were and are dogs kept at the public expense, and chained, so that it was impossible for a fugitive to make his escape without passing within reach of them. Should the runaway endeavour to swim round, he well knew that the bays were alive with sharks. There was a boat kept on the mainland side of the peninsula, but what could the police force stationed there want so far away ? If the boat had been kept on the peninsula side of the isthmus, thepilotwouldhavethoughtthatitcbn- ' j tamed an escaped party of convicts. This [ view of the matter once suggested, made

everyone ontbe^lert., Shipahad been seized . before, and the crews either murdered out- : righVor turned' adrift to? make their way "back as they best could in a boat, or, as happened in. the case of the Lady Hobart, had been "compelled to work the ship under the/guidance of the captors. The mate, however, soon made the matter clear. His telescope shewed that none of them* wore either, the bright yellow or the gray clothingin which runaways from Port Arthur ■would be clothed. In a few minutes it became evident that ■ the boat was making her way to the ship. As she drew near, she was carefully scanned, in order that some trace of her character might be discovered. " They are not convicts by their dress," said one. . ," Two of them, at least, have blue shirts on like policemen," said a Hobart-town lad. .-,.- ----"Can they be a shipwrecked crew?" asked another. But before he could ba answered, the captain noticed that there were only four men pulling, although eleven were in the boat. Presently, they saw a white rag hoisted onthe top of an oar, and the man who had suggested that they might be a shipwrecked crew gave himself credit for his sagacity. f If they are shipwrecked men, they pull like landsmen." " But ships' crews don't all pull like whalers," suggested the pilot. " And ships' crews that don't belong to ■vrhalers don't carry whaling-boats such as that," answered the captain. ■ Altogether,/ there were circumstances about the incident which would have created wonder, if not anxiety, at any time ; but now, while the ship was lying becalmed, they naturally became an exciting topic. : Soon the boat could be made out clearly, and a fair notion obtained of the men in her. ,jN"one of them were clothed in the least like convicts. That, at any rate, was clear. Two had blue over-shirts ; the rest had nothing in particular in their dress to indicate who or what they were. They might be sailors, or they might be ordinary colonial labourers. As the boat drew near, it was seen that they only possessed four oars. Altogether there were eleven men in her. As soon as they got within speaking-distance, the captain shouted to ask them who they were, and what they wanted. His suspicions had been aroused, and he was just the man to make a hard fight rather than have his ship taken. But he felt half ashamed of himself as he shouted, because apparently there was only a boat of unarmed men approaching. "We are the shipwrecked crew of the Philadelphia, American whaler," shouted the man. steering in the whale-bbat. "That boat never belonged to an American whaler," said the captain to the pilot. "She is the police-boat; I know her by the red line," interrupted the pilot eagerly. " Mr. Smith," the captain called quietly to the first mate, " get your anchor on the bulwarks ready to drop over into that boat if there should be any need for it." Mr. Smith thought the precaution a rather foolish one, but obeyed, as a matter of course. " Now, boatswain, bring up your lances and harpoons." When the latter order had been obeyed, it was evident that it would have been an exti*emely dangerous thing to make an attack on tho Mary Ann. The lance, as sharp as a razor, in the hands of a skilful whaler, would be a terrible weapon. But the captain had seen by the faces of the crew that they thought his precautions altogether unnecessary ; and as he looked towards the boat, he felt inclined to agree with them. Almost the only circumstance of suspicion was the facfc that they were in the police whale-boat. By this time the boat was within easy speaking-distance of the ship, and the men could be readily seen from the deck. "How do you come by that boat?" asked the pilot. " The police have lent it to us to go to Hobart-town in. Our own was too much damaged to float any longer." " But this is not the way to Hobarttown." " No. We saw you, and thought you would give us a lift when the sea-breeze came up," answered the man at the steer-ing-oar. The statement might possibly be true, and indeed the whole aspect of affairs looked so ordinary, that no one seemed to think of making any opposition to the approach of the boat. A rope-ladder was thrown over to them, and without more ado they made fast their boat, and followed each other on board. And then there began a short tragedy, which lasted only three minutes. The boat's crew were runaway convicts, who had surprised the police, taken their boat, stolen their clothes, and had planned this attack upon the whaler, with the object of getting away from the island. Each man, at a signal given by a short active man, who acted as their leader, produced a pistol, and pointing it at the head of the whaler nearest him, intimated, in the plainest possible way, that death would be the doom of any one who should venture to resist. A. shot was fired at each. The captain was slightly wounded, and the boy overpowered. Two men who resisted were mortally wounded, and then the Mary Ann was in the possession of eleven of picked scoundrels. Her crew, with the exception of three men, were bound;, the old pilot and captain were locked in the cabin, at the door of which a man Stood sentry ; arid the ship's head was turned seaward. The convicts then held a short consultation, and the result was that they ordered four of the crew and the pilot to be brought on deck, to be lowered into the whale-boat by which they had themselves come to the ship, and turned adrift. When this was done, the captain and the remainder of his crew, now reduced to six, were brought together, and informed by Black Diek — for the leader of the ruffians was the notorious bushranger— that they were going to California, that resistance on the part of anybody would be punished by instant death, but that if these sailors would work willingly, they should be well treated. The same night the ship ran out of Storm Bay, and by daylight was out of sight of land. The poor sailors, who were expecting a run on land after their monotonous voyage, had h three months' journey before them, with the certainty of no pay at the end, and the v probability of hard treatment in the mean-'./-tHfle;-;'; /■-. - ,■ ): .-','; ';■■'-.' (To be continued.)

■ \ 'SX: country paper says sugar has gone jip so high 'as .to.p roduce a slight increase in the price ofjsand. = - 'l\ The leader of a camp meeting in Ohio announced, •' The brother-in-law of Gene•ral.Grrarit will now lead us in prayer."ft ;^ir H Yi 8 the G-old Coast the best place ; to go to have your leg cut off i —Because you' will. find the knee-grows there. " JPTATOiif lias written ' honest man' on &cc," said : a irian to Jerrold, speaking Jerrolds faith was "flfu^ph !' replied 4^wot>^en^ J penittast'iiaTe been a kt*# .'«aa#ite; •„. . • .>V'£'Xt' : £-?r.'~ *■£&??* Js J - ■ ? -• ■■ i^ • ;- i ' ji|rf^;M ./Jrv-U; jj:V>-. / .'-. ; f f -. *. ' ; : : '•-