AMATEUR CREW

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 16 July 1938, Page 11

AMATEUR CREW

ABOARD THE CAP PILAR INTERESTING LETTER FROM MEMBER Mr W. Bacon, of Wm. Bacon and Co.. New Zealand branch of jewellery manufacturers, who was on a visit to Nelson this week, has kindly handed us a letter from Mr Jack Power, son of a d ; rector of the Birmingham firm (W. A. P. Watson Ltd.), who is aboard the barquentine Cap Pilar, which left New Zealand with an amateur crew of Englishmen and New Zealanders, and is now crossing the Atlantic Ocean on the last lap to England, where she is expected to arrive in August, thus ending a world pleasure cruise. Mr Power writes:— A SEA MONSTER April 24th, 1938Well! Here we are again, but I don’t expect I shall be able to sav very much more as I am again cook this week and I don’t get much time to write when I am in the galley. However. 1 will continue where I left off, which was becalmed just south of the line. Well, the next day, still becalmed. I was working down in the chip shop making a new out-rigger for the canoe, when I heard ( a cry of “huge shark” so we all dashed on deck and looked over the side and expected to see just a large shark. Instead, what we saw was a real seamonster a few feet from the side of the ship. At first I thought it was the bed of the ocean. We measured it along the side of the ship and made it to be between 35 and 40 feet long. The head was at least 12 feet across and the tail fin was about 12 feet high. It was dark grey and covered with small white spots. For a while it just cruised up and down the side of the ship, so we put a piece of salt fish on the shark hook and it over. We knew the line had no hope of holding it but we thought it might bring its head out of the water and so enable us to get a photo of it However, as soon as it found resistance on the line it spat it out again, so we had to think of other methods. With the shark came a shoal of tunny, and of dolphins, also an ordinary shark about ten feet long. Sevelal chaps went out on the jib-boom and fished for the tunny and I put a line ever for the small shark. I hooked him but he got away. Six tunny were caught, average weight 301bs. Then we got a coil of new rope and tried to lasso the big shark. By this time it had taken to swimming round and round the ship, passing under the jib-boom each time, so the skipper and the third mate went out there with one end of the noose and I sat on the anchor with the other. The first and second mates had the end of the ropes made fast to the windlass. Several times he went either under or over the noose, but at

last he went Through it and the cry went up “haul away”. Feverishly we all pulled in the slack but as he felt the lope over his back, he quickened his speed. The idea was to tighten the noose just in front of his tail fin, but we were just a second too late as it tightened on his fin; it held for a minute then slipped, and we never saw him again. It is impossible to describe him to you. as he was altogether too amazing. We estimate his weight at 20 tons. We saw in a book where a 28ft Basking shark was caught and he weighed 14J tons, but the one we saw was very much broader and very much bulkier than that one. According to Sanson (our marine biologist) it is entirely unknown; it was obviously a type of Basking shark, but very different to any that are on record. Several photographs were taken of it. but it is doubtful if they will be any good. Well! So much for that. The next item of interest is the pigs. Last week it was decided to kill the large one—a boar—and as I was the only one on board that had had any experience in pig killing. I was asked to do the job. Peter and Stew helped me. The Skipper was quite unable to even watch the operation, so he just gave us a service revolver and went It.low. After much difficulty I got a noose round his upper jaw and hauled him to one end of the sty—Peter put the revolver to his head and fired. Stew put a rope round his hind leg and hoisted him over the boat skids and I cut his throat —one and a half minutes and it was all over. 1 The rest was not so easy, or at least not so quick. We scalded and scraped him, then I gutted and jointed him as well as any butcher could have done.

April 28th, 1938 We are now within fifteen miles of the coast of Panama and 150 miles off Balbao, we expect to be there on Monday, so this will be the last time I shall be able to write to you this side of America. To-morrow (Friday) there is the third pig to kill and on Sunday I want to get all my shore flothes ready.. There is very little to tell you now, t we have been two months out from Callao and things are getting a little stale. There is of course, the crossing the line ceremony. There were nine colonials who had not crossed the line before, so the rest of us contrived a very fine christening for them. We rigged a new foresail on the main deck as a swimming bath; it was about ten feet square and afcf.ut two feet deep and we had the main boom across it. Newell, the second mate, was King Neptune and I was his wife. We sat at one end of the bath in our robes of state— Newell had a scarf round his waist —a pareu around his shoulders and a crown made of cardboard, I had two hanks of sail yarn for a bust (and what a oust), a pillow on my stomach (to look feminine), and a pareu round the lot for hair, and I had two bunches of rope yarn hanging on either side of my face and a large wahine hat from the Islands. The colonials were all kept for’ad and brought aft one by one. The procedure was as follows—three or four “policemen” would go for’ad and collar one man and drag him aft, he would then be made to sit on the u »oom over the bath. Neptune would ‘hen say a few words to him and tell him he wanted washing and just at that moment he would be pushed back into the bath: then he is dragged out and with the whitewash sprayer sprayed with size, then covered with flour. He is then sat on a box and shaved. In the meantime he is splashed with paint of all colours. He is then made tv sit on the boom again and sing a song or do something. Sometimes they were taken in pairs and made to fight blindfolded. Blue and Nobby were made to feed each other with treacle while blindfolded. Towards the end when there were seven or eight of the colonials who had been discharged, they worked up a counter attack and dragged Neptune and myself into the water. This immediately became an “all-in” free fight with everybody in the water, which lasted about half an hour, but I think the colonials got the worst of it. However, I got a split eyebrow and a ricked back, which is not better yet, but it was worth it just for the pleasure of ducking the colonials.