THE NIGHTMARE OF THE SEA

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume 37, Issue 9607, 25 October 1907, Page 4

THE NIGHTMARE OF THE SEA

Fifteen hundred inasterless ships are helplessly adrift in all the Seven Seas; a graveyard fleet, menacing the world's shipping with a peril no foresight can avoid. And everyone of them tells an eerie tale of ocean tragedy. Who can forget his first glimpse of one of these ,«fiip wroiths, sinister and horrible, a battered hulk swinging this way and that, with splintered mast stumps pointing mutely to Heaven, while huge white capped seas swept over the half submerged and moss green decks ? The terror of the seas, with every sea man's hand against them, and all the maritime nations devising means for their destruction ! Now what has happened to these ships—well found, well manned, sailing frequented seas, and that often enough in fair weather? Sometimes their story is known, but again their fate may be A CREEPY MYSTERY, striking awe to the soul of every sailor What tragedies may not be attributed I to these creeping corpses of fine ships? And not: minor tragedies of barques and tramps, but the destruction of great liners the big White Star Naronic, for instance. It is only a few years since this superb steamer of 5000 tons left Liverpool with a crew of -74 under Captain Roberts, who had 'already made half a dozen trips in her, iind found her a grand ship. She had cost 600,000 dollars, and had ten water-tight compartments. But she was never seen nor heard of again just a dark mystery of the sea. A derelict steered by a dead man't hand is worth recording. That was the sight that met the eyes of men on board the ship Ariebis last year in the Pacific. The man had lashed himself to the wheel, and had died or been struck dead in some tremendous storm. And there he 3tood, apparently nerved ii nd erect, with cold hands grasping the spokes, and the Sightless eyes that seemed to steer ahead. The master and officers of the Ariebis scuttled the derelict, and sent her lone watcher into the depths to a fitting burial, There are some derelicts which deserve the name only because they are found on the high seas with not a living person on board. Search the whole maritime annals through, and you will find no more amazing instance than that of the Marie Celeste. Her very name stands for A WEIRD FANTASTIC STORY of the sea. One fine morning in 1887 she left New York for London with a crew of 13, including the master's wife and young child, A British barque sighted her in mid-Atlantic a fortnight later ; but tint a sign of life did she •five when hailed in the International God. - *. The British captain, greatly puzzled, tried every means known at sen, hut in vain. He could hardly bei"ve ii possible that so trim looking a vessel was derelict and abandoned, He sent a boat to her ; and strange indeed was the —or absence of it—revealed by an exhaustive search, high and low, The boats were in their davits, the hull undamaged, the cargo intiict. The bellying sails were set; the men's weekly wash hung above the forecastle. A sun awning covered the poop. Rigging and spars, binnacle and wheel and rudder—all were in perfect order, as were also the sailors' kits, and even the savoury dinners set out iu tho forecastle. Tn the little cabin was the -.ewing-machine of tho captain's wife, and under its needle a baby's nightgown. In the chart room the chronometer ticked cheerily j a cash box was found well filled ; and the log book was found posted to within 48 hours of the visit. Every record showed the pas sage uneventful and favourable, Indeed, the searchers could see at a , tmv . • p i 1 lirouglt iio sun m. Of pii iuy ni' inunn'i or a struggle of any kind, there .vas no evidence, Yet 13 living creatures had disappeared as if spirited away into ihe great deep by some ngency not of t hi» earth. The United States Government spared no efforts to solve this, one of the si rangest of all the sea's ' mysteries, but no clue lihs ever been 1 found,—Exchange,