ROMANTIC WRECK.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 114, 10 April 1930, Page 10

ROMANTIC WRECK.

LOSS OF THE GARTHPOOL. RESCUED MEN’S STORY. Romance and adventure have appropriately drawn the curtain on the last of the famous British clippers, the four-masted sailing ship Garthpool, says an English paper. Wreckedon a desert island “flooded” with champagne cider; looted by poverty-stricken natives; an all-night drift in lifeboats; seamen’s twenty-four-mile ride to send message for help; and rescue by British sloop were the chief adventures of the survivors. The Garthpool came to grief on the night of November 11 (Armistice Day) on a reef off the shore of a sub-tropical island picturesquely named Boavista, one of the Cape Verde Group, off the African coast. Twenty-one members of the crew landed at Liverpool from the Royal Mail liner Descado. Many had only the meagre clothes in which they stood, their outfits having been looted from the wreck by marauding natives. The Garthpool sailed from Hull in ballast for Australia for a cargo ot grain, and was eighteen days out, with ,a trade breeze filling her sails, when the mountain peaks of the Cape Verde Islands peered above the twilight mist. Suddenly about 9 p.m. she struck the reef. On her port side lay the ‘ Spanish steamer Axpe Mendies, which after futile efforts to signal, they found to be a derelict, hard and fast on a reef, where she had lain for nearly twelve months. All hands were called on deck and the sails shortened, in an endeavour to ‘wear”' the ship, but great Atlantic rollers and a heavy swell carried them further on to the reef. “Everything seemed to be dragging us on,” said one member of the crew. “We tried to take her off, but soon she was bumping heavily, arid, in view of the danger of the masts and spars falling upon us, we provisioned the lifeboats and made ready to leave. Before midnight we abandoned the ship in our two lifeboats. ■ . “For some time,” he continued, “we sailed about close inshore, but the. moon had set, and with the blackness of the night and the heavy mist it was impossible to find a landing place, so we dropped anchor in the shelter of a small lagoon. “FLOOD” OF CIDER. “Crowds of natives gathered, on the beach, and they were continually offering us champagne cider, wdiich they had retrieved'from the wrecked Spanish steamer. The whole island seemed to bo flooded with cider—there were bottles and bottles of it everywhere. We remained at this place for two days subsisting almost entirely on ship’s biscuits and drinking cider.” Two other members of the crew, who were making their first trip to sea to gain experience, declared there were about 100,000 bottles of cider knocking about. “We were given so much, ’ said one. “that we became heartily sick of it, and yearned for water to drink, but the only water we could obtain was of a'poor quality, and had to be brought two miles from the rugged country inland. . , “We left the wreck wearing only trousers -and shirt,” he continued, “but the weather was g’orious, and.’ive occupied most of the day bathing in the surf. “The natives, who appeared ji pov-erty-stricken lot, came down from the islands in swarms to us,” he said, remarking laconically that they appeared to exist mostly on wrecks. After a day on tho island native fishermen offered to go out in surf boats to the wreck, and agreed to take a number of the crow of the Garthpool in each of -.heir boats. When they reached tho wreck, however, the natives immediately began to plunder her of the clothing, provisions and everything on which they could lay their hands, which they carried away in high glee, despite the protestations of the two men. The natives appeared to regard this as their right, but were none the less friendly towards the shipwrecked sailors. , A TREACHEROUS RIDE. Recounting how they regained contact with means for their return, the boatswain said they were told of a settlement nearly twenty miles away at which there was a wireless station. Captain Thomson and the" second mate set off on horseback across the treacherous hinterland, rugged with gaping canyons, and with thick undergrowth, to the British Consul at St. Vincent. A sloop was dispatched to them, and after spending three days at the native port of Sal Rei, they were taken 160 miles in the sloop to St. Vincent, where they were feted by the residents foi ten days before embarking for Liverpool in the Descado, which had diverted its course for them. The Garthpool was the last of the big British square-rigged windjammers and the last of a lino of stout ships whose history would fill volumes. It was founded by William Garthwaite, who developed a very profitable transport service between Canada and Frunce, and was rewarded with a baronetcy ten years ago. The sailing ships were a sideline, kept on more for sentiment than business. They all finished more or less dramatically. An iceberg settled the Garthforce, now a hulk at Durban; the Gartlnvay was wrecked on Santa Maria Island, off Chile; the Garthgarry ran ashore on Tierra del fuego; and most of her company were drowned; the Garthneill, now a hulk at Port Adelaide, alone drifted into old ago peacefully. A. halo still hangs round her in windjamming circles. In 1919, on a voyage' from Sydney to Bunbury (W.A.), she circumnavigated the globe in 76 days!