ROMANCE OF THE SEA.

Hokitika Guardian, 12 April 1923, Page 4

ROMANCE OF THE SEA.

LONDON, l-’eh I!i. As strange s! ’O' of the sea as one • < mild look lor will he unfold, d in the j Admiralty Court m-xt month. It is till about the sailing-ship Hesperus her sister ship the Harbinger—whose memory still lingers with .seafarer* in I’at-i----lic waters, fur -he traded between Fonilp and Australia in the eighties, the ora of fast trij < under sail. But this name w ill not appear in the court list', she is now disguised as the “Silvania.” and tlterehv hangs t!te tale.

Till- Si I\:i n i;i lias been lying at Rorf!t';t u x tor a lolly: time. When her trading days v.ere over slit- stems to have passed into the' possession of the ’Russians, mat was a training ship. Since the revolution, apparently, she has been run by a London company. Some months ago the .ship's officers, who had received no wages for a long time, ran her into Bordeaux with the idea of getting their money lrom the sale of the ship. A prior claim wn> put in hy a linn in Bordeaux whirl) had supplied provisions, and litis claim was upheld hy a French Court. 'I he Imperial Merchant Service < ; nild ha' taken the matter np on heltalf ot the crew, imping to get the money tor the wages hv tile sale of the very ikon of gold and jewels which was presented to the vessel by the Tsar when she was in the Russian Government service. This ikon is stated to he in the pos- j session of the Finnish Consul at Bov- j deattx. For the sake of the crow we j hope tlio ikon and its adornments have no such illusory value as 1 1 to Russian rouble.