OLD SEA CAPTAIN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18255, 25 November 1933, Page 11

OLD SEA CAPTAIN

BRAVE RESCUE AT SEA GIRL WASHED OVERBOARD NORFOLK ISLAND, Nov. 7. One of the three surviving Biteairn Islanders wiio landed at Norlolk Island m Ibb6, Captain George Henry Parkin Christian, celebrated lus eightieth birthday on October 10. He, is still a big, powerful man. 11 is eyesight, he claims, is as good as when he was a lad. In Ins young days, as a steersman in a whaleboat, he was famous. Given a good, ash steer oar, it is said he could almost lift a whaleboat round, so great was his strength. Of a hold, adventurous spirit, his life has been tilled with stirring incidents. For 25 years he was a master of whaling craft sailing from New Bedford, America, and for some years he was pearl-shell diving at Thursday Island. lie was also diver for the Auckland Harbor Board. On one occasion his whaling crew 'mutinied. Rushing below with axes, they began cutting holes through the ship’s bottom planking, to scuttle her. Captain Christian and his officers clappea on the hatches, with the remark to the mutineers: ‘'Very good, if she goes down, you’ll he the first to drown.” Ihe mutiny was soon quelled. GREAT SWIMMING EXPLOIT As a swimmer he was noted. He, says that in those-days lie felt he could never tire of swimming. The exploit to which his memory returns with most satisfaction is his rescue from drowning of a young girl when he was a lad about 17 years of age. He and his mate, Harry Knight, were, at the time, carrying coal from the Hay of Islands to Auckland for the owners of their craft, Messrs. Blown, who had built her. She was an exceptionally smart 17-ton cutter, which Captain Christian declares could live through, any hurricane. On one trip they had cm board, as passengers, Ah'. Brown, a brother of the builder, and a girl in her “teens.” One pitch-black, stormy evening, Captain Christian was steering while the other men were having their tea below. A sudden lurch of the vessel threw the girl overboard. Captain Christian immediately jambed the wheel hard down and, bellowing down the scuttle, “Girl overboard!” threw off his heavy sea overcoat anil dived into the sea. The girl had disappeared instantly in the inky darkness, but he reckoned that if ■he were afloat- at all, she must be in the vessel’s wake.

• Kicking off his heavy sea boots he swam along the wake and found the girl l.noved up bv the air in her clothes. A big sea was running and it was pitch

dark. There was no sign of the cutter. At the end of four hours Captain Christnin bad lust decided to make for the New Zealand coast, some miles away, when the sharp ears of the girl heard the voice of Mr. Brown shouting her name. The cutter eventually managed to locate them and took them on board. The Royal Humane Society awarded him its silver medal.