HE’S HAD HIS SHARE OF ROMANCE

Northern Advocate, 8 January 1938, Page 6

HE’S HAD HIS SHARE OF ROMANCE

[Special To “Northern Advocate ”] AUCKLAND, This Day. In the limber lands of the Northern Wairoa three decades ago there was much romance for a small boy. Young Tommy Clune bad more than his share of it.

One memorable day Tommy, then 12*, signed on a deep waterman. That was more than 30 years ago.

Today Mr Clune, with 18 years’ of sail experience behind him, is happy and contented among his cows on his Henderson holding. “Funny how so many sailors seem to become farmers,” he remarked. “Seems they must keep to the life in the open.” N Enough For Anyone.

And he gazed with pardonable pride at a fine Friesian cow ruminating beneath the friendly shade of a nearby pine. Most former windjammer sailors consider three or four years spent in wardships more than sufficient for anyone (those who have been there themselves), but 18 years could not lessen Mr Clime’s passion for that type of craft. . , 1

When the Finnish four-mast barque Pamir comes to Auckland soon, Mr Clune will be one of the first to greet her.

He has made it his business to visit and go aboard every sailer in port for years past, and he knows the history and peculiarities of each and every one. He does not go aloft as he would like to, but casts a searching sail trained eye about decks and rigging. Never Smoked Or Liquored.

Mr Clune, who, incidentally, has never smoked or taken liquor, served in such well-known traders to New Zealand as the barque Louisa Craig, the Ysabel barquentine, the tops’l schooner Huia and the six-mast barquetine E. R. Sterling. ■ . ; , During his sea service he graduated from boy to chief officer, and served for a period as second mate of the E, R. Sterling. He was to have shipped aboard the Helen B. Sterling of the same line when she foundered in the Tasman Sea, but was -prevented from doing so by an injury, A delay in the arrival of his ship precluded his joining Sir Ernest' Shackleton’s Terra Nova Expedition of 1911.