SHIPPING.

Otago Witness, Issue 1950, 4 April 1889, Page 18

SHIPPING.

AN EXTRAORDINARY VOYAGE. An extraordinary voyage on the part of a deserted ship is recorded as follows by the New York Evening Jjun : — " The great lumber schooner W. L. White was abandoned at sea on Tuesday, March 13, 1883, while a great blizzard was raging. The vessel had started for New York on February 29, laden with a valuable cargo of lumber, which she had taken on at Boboy, Ga. She was under the command of Captain Whitmore, and had a crew of eight or nine men. The blizzard caught her off Absecom light on Monday, March 12. With the millions of gallons of water which swept over her she became speedily waterlogged, and therefore helpless. Captain Whitmore couid do nothing with her, and he expected every moment that she would be turned upside down in the trough of the sea. There was one boat that had survived the battering of the storm, and in this the captain and the crew took refuge, and for four days, struggling against wind and sea, they expected every moment would be their last. On the the morning of the 17th, when about 70 miles east of Cape May, the ship fiecord. Captain Forbes, from Calcutta, hove in sight, and picked up the captain and the crew, who were so thoroughly exhausted and frostbitten that they had to be lifted to the deck of the Kec ir< 1 Ths schooner started on her phantomlike course by drifting southerly some flO miles, And she was first see i on the morning of March 19. Then she disappears d. and, though captains of vessels were warned to be on the look out for her, she was drifting and sailiug thoab ia phantom waters, so to apeak.lfor nearly two weeks. She had really entered the Quit Stream, and she was carried 640 miles in a north-easterly direction, and on March 31 the outlook of one of the ocean liners saw her black hulk in the distance, just off the Newfoundland banks. When eyes of sailors again beheld her she wsraOO miles east of the point where she was lastseen. That last sight was made on April 17. After this revelation the vessel agaicudisappeared, and was not seen until the morning of May 9, 570 miles north-east of the point last seen, directly in mid-ocean, and about due east from Newfoundland. On May 30 three of the captains of steamships saw her, but she was a long way off. In the latter part of June and the early part of July she made a revelation of herself a number of times. The' steamship Egypt saw her, as did the Adriatio, Oephalonia, theServia, the Wisconsin, and the Ohio; besides a number of smaller craft. On October 80 she took another course, but on the last day of November the captain of the British, King sighted

her 600 miles away in a north-easterly direotion from ( the point where the steamship Ohio had seen her.' Then she disappeared, and from that day until January 24 last she was out of sight of land. But the currents that led to the shore of the Hebrides captured her, so that the inhabitants of the picturesque little town of Stornoway, who have seen many a wreck, were astonished when this strangeand solitary oraft came ashore. Stornoway is 700 miles from the point where the schooner was last seen. This is the only oase on record in which a vessel has oroised the ocean without a navigator and entered port. The derelict schooner Twenty-one Friends, which was abandoned March 4, 1885, 100 miles S.S.B. of where the W. L. White was abandoned, crossed the ocean, and was last seen on December 4, 1885, in latitude 45 N., longitude 8 W., 75 miles from the nearest land and 130 miles N.N.B. oE Cape Flnlsterre. The W. L. White actually travelled 5050 miles, the distance between the points where she was abandoned and where she went ashore being but 8100 miles." The B.M.S. Aorangi took about 7000 carcases of frozen mutton from Otago. She is completing her cargo at Lyttelton. The Shaw, Savill and Albion Company's B.M.S. Doric, from Wellington, March 7, left Bio de Janeiro on the evening of the 28th for Plymouth. The meat was in good order. The same company's B.M.S. Coptic left Plymouth on March 23, and will make Port Chalmers her first port of call. She is due on May 6.

Soibwob and Bekftka.— Baron Liebig sajt of beeftea that as a pleasant and refreshing light diet it has been known for centuries among all civilised nations, and that its object is not to contain any very substantial nourishment, but simply to act as a palatable stimulant on the whole system, more especially on the nerves of the stomach. The celebrated chemist used to Bay that beeftea or bouillon was really taken to prepare digestion efficiently for a more substantial dinner ta follow. The assertion made by puffing advertisements that certain sorts of fluid beeftea represent the most perfept form of concentrated food is simply absurd. They may contain a little nourishment, sufficient to keep an invalid old lady or a little baby alive for a few days; but the qualification of nourishment in the proper sense is absolutely wanting. It seems desirable that the gublic should be aware of these facts.— St. James' fazette.