THE GREAT WATERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20596, 21 June 1930, Page 32 (Supplement)

THE GREAT WATERS.

TRUE TALES OF THE SEA.

" Tho Romance of the Soa" is the namo given by. the author, G. Gibbard Jackson, to a record of • many matters connected with ships and the sea. It deals, in a closely-packed 300 pago 3, with tho romance of tho sea in, its myriad forms, the romanco of clippers, of warships, of tho tramp and tho derelict, with

whaling, diving and heroic rescues, the peril of th? ice, monsters of the deep, and tho days of piracy. Tho writer has dono his work with conscientious thoroughness, and if he has no particular graces of stylo, the intrinsic interest of his subject covers a multitude of litorary defects. Tho chapter on warships gives a spirited account of what was porhajis tho finest isolated fight of the war, that between the Cunardor, tho Carmania and tho German Cap Trafalgar, cloverly disguised as a Union Castle liner. The contest was an equal 0110, and the fight lasted just one hundred minutes. At the end of that time the gallant Cap Trafalgar heeled over and went down. At the end of tho

war, the Navy League presented the Carmania with a piece of plate that had

been carried, in Nelson's cabin at tho Battle of Trafalgar, a fitting recognition of her gallant cxplpit. The submarine, usually considered the latest development in . naval craft, is shown by Mr. Jackson to go back in its origin at least 300 years. At first the submersible ship was theoretical rather than... practical, but in 1775 a successful submarine was brought out by an- American, David Bushnell- It was made of wood, shaped something like a tortoise, and held only ono passenger. It. could remain undor water for half an hour, and was actually fitted for : war : purposes with a charga of powder :to. bo attached by a jscrew .before being fired, against tho hull of a warship. British Warship Attacked,

During tho War of'lndependence this submarine actually got under H.M.S. Eagle, and began his task. " Indeed the man within her thought it completed arid camo hastily away. An hour afterwards thero was a loud explosion, but it took place somo distanco from tho British ship, tho scrow having loosed its hold on the keel of the vessel.

Modern opinion dismisses tho probability of such creatures as sea serpents, though thero is nothing inherently impos siblo in the existence of survivals of an older epoch. " Great excitement prevailed in the closing months of-1808, when tho news spread that a'sea-serpent, sixty feet long, had been driven nshoro at Stronsay, in tho Orkneys. At first tho scientists wero agreed that this, at last, was proof positive that the sea.serpent was a reality and not a myth. But when men with expert knowledge wero permitted to examine the find, they pronounced it to be an extremely fine example of tho basking shark. But, if there are no such things a3 sea-serpents, the imagination could hardly conceive of anything more awful than, for instanco, the giant squid which in 1874 attacked the'littlo schooner, Pearl,, in the Indian Ocean. Knives and axes proved futile against its huge mass. Its tentacles gripped the masts and caused tho schooner to come upon her beam ends; in this position she remained long enough to fill and thus, when sho rights, it was only to settlo down; Wrecks and Pirates. Among the wrecks that strew the pages of Mr. Jackson's book the worst fate seems reserved for those that go ashore. The passengers and crew of tho East Indiaman Grosvenor, wrecked in 1782 on tho African coast, met with a fate far more terrible than tho sea provides. Of the 135 people who landed only six managed to reach a white settlement, and this after unspeakable suffering. Yet, their misfortunes are overshadowed by the scenes at the wreck of the French warship Medusa, which, in the early days of tho 19th century, owing "• incredibly bad seamanship, struck a reef on tho Sonegal Coast. The Medusa was transporting soldiers and, as thoy wero recruited mainly from the gutters of Paris, their conduct upon the rafts causes more horror than surprise. In drunken madnoss thoy fought the officers, threw their fellows to the ahark3,. jettisoned the food supply, 6tove in the water casks, and then drifted under a'pitiles3 sun for three weeks, when, out of the hundreds, a handful wero rescued alive, but on the verge of madness. The romance of the buccaneers provides a stirring chapter. Tho origin of the namo, not perhaps commonly known, is from " boucan, a kind of wooden gridiron on which the Caribbean natives smoked their meat. This method of preservatio'n appealed to tho wild free-hooters of tho sea. Henco they became " buccaneers." 14 The Rornanco of the. Sea," by G. Gibnot only to read but to keep for rcforcnce. .''The Homance of the Sea," by G. Gibbard. Jacksou. (Herbert Jenkins),