"THE CARGO BROACHERS."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22000, 5 January 1935, Page 5 (Supplement)

"THE CARGO BROACHERS."

By " KARL L ARSE IS 7 "

Accounts of cargo-broaching in the old days of sail are common: the usual lure being bullion or spirits. Nowadays sailing ships are scarce, and they carry 110 gold bars or cases of whisky in their holds. . However, there is one little incident of cargo-broaching within recent years, an incident which in its way is rather pathetic. . . . Tho Laeisz " Flying P Ll "°\ °, Hamburg, owned a magnificent fleet of large sailing ships which were employed in the Chilian nitrate-trade. So reliable were these fast vessels that a German firm entrusted a consignment of seasonable goods-toys for the Christmas market—to the four-master Priwall. Bound out round the Horn to Chile Priwall was manned by 44 boys, some of mere school age. Discipline had to be strict, of course, but the German system was to British eyes severe to the point of brutality. < Hard and unhappy as their hfe was, the boys brought some pleasure to it by opening cases of toys in the tradewinds. They played with the clockwork trains in their watches below, and before the bad weather fell, repacked them quite undamaged in their cases. t j Then the youngsters- who had played with toys put on their oil-skins and became men once more. They brought their ship safely throiigh the Horn gales and into port in time for ChristmThe nitrate trade is dead now, so far as the sailing-ship is concerned, and only two vessels, Priwall and Padua remain under the Laeisz flag. They are engaged in the Australian grain-trade, making splendid passages, as they have always done. „ , , The boys who made that voyage have grown older, scattered on sea and land over the world, but the memory of their "Christmas presents wi probably remain with them when all else of that voyage and ship has been forgotten.