SMART TRIPS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 916, 8 October 1879, Page 2

SMART TRIPS.

The Evening Post says :— The most dangerons thing a shipping reporter can do is to commit himself to asserting that a certain passage of a vessel from one port to another is the fastest on record, or that one craft, be it a steamer or sailing vessel, beat another craft which she happened to fall in with | going the same way. In either case the appearance of such a statement is a signal for a rush of sea captains to the editorial sanctum to protest against its truthfulness, and to claim each for himself and his " Saucy Sally " or Dolly Darling" the honor so unfairly given to another . . Those quickest passages on record are never satisfactory. If an unfortunate reporter allows himself to mention one, what a nice day he has of it on the wharf the next day. Every other captain he meets -wants him to put.in a paragraph that his ship did it in shorter time by several hours. In Auckland, once, a reporter made the assertion that a sailing craft had made the quickest run from Newcastle. She was a clean, wholesome looking vessel, with good ends and shapely lines, and certainly looked femart enough for anything. The next morning an old Salt, commanding about the oldest brig in the Australian colonies, with a bow like a brewer's stomach and a stern like the end of a box, came up to the office, and after administering a parental rebuke to ' the editor, claimed for his ship the honor ascribed to the The old man's claim was investigated, and this was what it amounted to : — On a certain day he left Newcastle with a westerly gale, which increased to hurricane force when he was fairly at sea. He would gladly have returned to port, but this was impossible, so he scudded under bare poles right across, and on the fourth day made the Three King3, the vessel leaking, her gear all to pieces, and captain and crew half drowned. The vessel did not arrive in Auckland until three days afterwards, but he claimed to have made the passage in four days.