MYSTERY SHIP

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 27 September 1927, Page 6

MYSTERY SHIP

WHAT HER LOG REVEALS

MURDER, {POISONING AND MUTINY.

TRIP TO GUINEA GOLD COAST.

Aftei taking a year to cross the Atlantic to the Guinea Gold Coast and back, the New York 1300-tou schooner Kingsway has returned to port, “bringing strange merchandise from that black voyage.” Her log tells of murder, voodoo rites, black magic, poisoning, and mutiny on the high seas. One of the crew is held prisoner (but the log says the ship had no irons to hold him) on a strange charge of murder; another is held to give evidence.

111-luck hounded this four-masted vessel from the time she left New York. Her captain was stricken with illness and forced to quit the ship at Pensacola, in Florida, on the way out. A new captain took her across with a mutinous crew and an insubordinate mate On the way back, it is recorded, a black cook tried to poison the officers. The crew were weakened by scuiy, °nd the “prisoner,” the alleged murderer, for whom there were no leg-irons. got loose and terrorised the decks. It is not yet clear whom the prisoner is accused of having murdered or tried to murder. GO-AS-YOU-PLEASE CREW. From the time the ship left Pensacola the crew had resented the presence of the new captain, and mate, old Fred Mortimer, sided with the malcontents. Fred Mortimer was the original of “Mister Pike” in Jack London’s story of “The Mutiny of the Elsinore. ,f On the Kingsway he helped the crew to defy the new captain, and to run the ship to suit themselves. When the ship called at Porto Rico'the cook deserted, and was replaced by a mulatto, who would not sail without his wife. Then new troubles started, and they were helped along by a voodoo curse. It seems that the mulatto lady had flirtations with members of the crew, seemingly without objection from the cook; but suddenly one day she borrowed a razor and she was found later with her throat cut. As the log says concerning this event: “Of this said mortal wound did she languish, and, languishing, did die.” There is a dark mystery about this, and that is where the voodoo and black magic are supposed to come in. For his sins, or suspected sins, the cook was put in chains, in the a fasense of leg-irons. but he broke loose twice, and was finally allowed to remain at large, a terror to all on board. Once he leaped overboard, and tried to swim away, but he was recaptured. TALE OF POISON. A real African native was next employed to cook, but he (the record says) tried to poison the captain, and when the ship returned to Porto Rico the mulatto was put back on his old job. Then “Mister Pike,” the aged mate, was taken ill and died, ending his turbulent career of 70 years in a grave at sea. After the passing of the aged mate the ill-fated ship made her way by fits and starts through blistering tropical calms and doldrums, reaching New York many months late. The ending of it all may be the first public hanging which New York has had for many years, for “murder on the high seas,” alone of all crimes, is still punishable by that form of the extreme penalty.