SHIPS AND MEN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21640, 4 November 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

SHIPS AND MEN

BY LONF.HANDKR

MEMORIES REVIVED

Thoughts of men that I have sailed with and the old ships that have long since drifted by came to mind when a correspondent gave me the last chapter in the life of " Bucko Harry," ono of a type that passed with the old-time sailing ship. Tho new man, although ho may sail ships over the same old course, will not see things as the oldtimers did. The first time 1 saw Bucko ho was strutting the stage in McGuire's singsong at ( Port Chalmers. This was in the early eighties, when the Port was quite a busy place. I remember the Dunedin, one of the clippers of those days, loading the first shipment of New Zealand frozen meat, which through some mishap to tho freezing gear was quite a long job, and the money Bucko Vas spending was earned at handling the damaged carcases. However, it was not until he became my shipmate in the whaler Splendid that I really knew the man.

On that voyage we had more than tho average number of deep-water sailors among the crew, and as most of them were cast-offs from their former ships, we had a tough crowd to handle, especially with Bucko as the sea lawyer. For the first few months of the cruise things went on fairly well, but as soon as enough had been earned to assure them a welcome at the Devil's Half-Acre (a resort of sailormen) in Dunedin, these deep-water men got restive and finally asked for the treatment usually given to men who refuse duty at sea. Strictly speaking, this was mutiny, but it was a mild one, and Bucko and six of his shipmates got off after serving a short sentence in Dunedin gaol. Since then I have heard quite a lot of njy old shipmate. Eventually one. of the hardest little sailormen this coast has known found his way to Tasmania, where he died at Macquarie Harbour and was buried there. Bucko Harry was just an able seaman, yet a gi*eat character, in the way sailorfolk see things. A Remarkable Navigator

Another remarkable character that I had the chance of voyaging with was Old Bill the Moucher, as our skipper called him. Old Bill's job was to keep run of the course made by the whaling ship Othello, sail where she would. He had nothing whatever to do with directing which way the ship should go. His part was to plot, on the chart the course made and the distance run, and there his responsibility ended. It was a strange arrangement, and the only instance I know of where there was no friction between skipper and navigator. Old Bill's knowledge of nautical astronomy was barely sufficient for him to find his way about, yet he did so, and with such remarkable accuracy that he came to be known as the best old " moucher " of the South Sea Islands.

I remember on one occasion the skip* per's asking the old man, after he had finished his. calcidatjenß» Xl.3Yheceis she now, Bill?" "That's where the reckoning puts her," replied the navigator, pointing to a hole he had stabbed in the chart, " but she is not there." "Where is she, then?" demanded the skipper, who was quite familiar with the Moucher's way of doing things. I was there and watched Old Bill mark a place on the chart about fifteen miles further to the eastward than that estimated by calculation, and heard him sav t " This is where she is." And, as we afterward proved, the okl-timor's guess came within a mile of the truth. About two or three months previous to this we had spent some time cruising in the neighbourhood of Sunday Island, and from the time we left there until wo sighted Preservation Light within ton minutes of the time guessed by our navigator, no land or other object by which the Moucher could check the chronometer had been sighted. So for the rest of our acquaintance I never questioned Old Bill's ability about taking care of a ship's reckoning. Yet, strange to say, he lost his own ship in a place that was generally considered sale. It was at the Neck at Stewart Island that the old whaling ship Pacific came to grief, either by burning or she dragged on shore—l am not sure which. However, her bones are there yet, and a while back I read that a brass gun had been recovered from the wreck of the Pacific. Wearing a Whale's Tooth

On that cruise of the Othello I recollect we called at Facile Harbour, in Dusky Sound, and two of my shipmates were Anglem and Gilrov, two names that appear in the history of that part of the country. Naturally, with such men close at hand, one came to hear quite a lot of stories about old times. The wreck that lies in Facile Harbour was shown me, and is now known to be that of the Endeavour, a ship that called there 011 the way to the East, but was condemned as unseaworthy. One has heard many strange stories about this old wreck, but I think that Dr. McNab's version will stand as correct history. Perhaps some day someone will wonder how the bones of a large sperm whale came to rest on the shores of Facile Harbour, which is about four or five miles from the open sea, and a snug refuge in any weather. The whale was taken there by the Othello on the one occasion that I was fortunate enough to visit that historic part of New Zealand. The youngest member of our crow 011 that voyage was a boy about sixteen years old, and he forgot himself so far as to steal some of the teeth of the Dusky Sound whale. This -was an offence that concerned all hands, and 110 had to be punished. So the mate got the carpenter to bore a hole through one of the stolen teeth and tie it with spunyarn round the boy's neck. This ornament ho had to wear during working hours. Sometimes, when he thought it was safe, 110 would slip the tooth inside his jumper, .but it would not bo long before someone would yell out, " Pull that tooth out." The Boy's Bath

But the mate let him off sooner than ho expected, and the affair was forgotten, until about fifteen years later, when a big bronzed and bearded man, evidently a seafarer, came up and said, " Are you Mr. —?" I acknowledged the fact, and lie said, " You will probably not remember me, but I am tho boy that used to wear the tooth." Naturally after that I had to have his story. He told me that ho was then on his way to Whangaroa to join a largo barque as second mate. I never knew this man's name, as ho was generally referred to as " the Boy." On the Othello we had four largo tanks in tire 'tween decks as a receptacle for the oil which overflowed from the cooler on deck, and sometimes the pipes and taps of the tanks became blocked with cold oil, and the Boy had the job of cleaning them. Thus he had a warm bath occasionally, for the oil in the upper half of the tanks was generally warm.