LONG CAREER AT SEA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20086, 25 October 1928, Page 17

LONG CAREER AT SEA.

— THREE MILLION MILES. RECORD OF CAPTAIN HEMMING. [from our, own correspondent.] LONDON. September 21. C;i))l;iin F. A. Hemming, who lias jnsl ret ired from I lie New Zealand Shipping Company, has spent, <lB years at sea, and estimates that ho has travelled three million miles. " I started on the sea in 1880, and served seven years in sailing ships, and then I wont into steam," Captain Hemming says. " L joined the Canadian and Australian Royal Mail Steamship Company and sailed between Sydney and Vancouver for 15 years. 1 was first an oflicer and then commander of the. Miowera, and in that ship 1 sailed a, million miles. This is a record, as far as 1 know. " AVlum the company was sold I joined the Now Zealand Shipping Company and sailed between London and New Zealand, and I remained with them until I retired. In the last 20 years 1 have only been in two ships* I was in ono for three years, and in the other, the Rimutaka, for the last seventeen years. In fact, 1 only left her the other day. In that ship I travelled 800,000 miles." Captain Hemming said that his father went to sea when ho was a boy and joined the Honourable East India Company. lie obtained his master's certificate and applied for the post of commander of the first P. and O. steamer. .Because he did not get it, ho left the sea and became a barrister, later a K.C., and afterwards a county court judge. " I was at sea all through the war," Captain Hemming added. " I sailed around England, China and a great many other placos in those four years, and I never saw a raider, a submarine, or a mine. In fact, I never saw the enemy in (ho air, on, or under the water." Speaking of tho chango from sail to steam, ho said that ho remembered one of tho clippers belonging to tho New Zealand Company passing a steamer, also owned by the company, circling round it, and then sailing away from it. For the present Captain Hemming will live in London, where ho has a house. Later ho will go for a visit to New York, and it, is not outside (ho bounds of possibility that ho will some day revisit New Zealand.