ROMANCE!

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 10, 2 April 1927, Page 1

ROMANCE!

Love in South Seas MOVING-PICTURE % WEDDING ZANE GREY’S CAPTAIN

And in the end the big bronzed sea-captain and the pretty Auckland girl . icho had met and loved, in the South Seas, were wedded on the poop of the schooner, while the sea breeze ruffled the hero s hair and the moving picture camera whirred close by.

This sounds like the end to a perfect “movie” romance, doesn’t it? Good red-blooded stuff with settings of languid lagoons and purple nights and Y iking voyages. l-lowever, it happens to be true and the final scene was “shot” down at the Western Wharf last evening on board Mr. Zane Grey’s schooner The Fisherman. The hero was Mr. Fred J. Klebingat, captain of the yacht and the heroine Miss Phyllis Reid, daughter of Mr. .T. C. Reid, bpatbuilder, of Northcote. They were married on the poop deck by the Rev. J. Lamb Harvey, of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, and the ceremony was photographed by a Los Angeles expert, who takes the “big game” fishing pictures. THREADS OF THE STORY The end of the tale is now discovered and it is rather a shame that it has to be told backwards. The story goes back to 1924, when Captain Klebingat was skipper of the Melrose, of San Francisco, trading in the South Seas. He had been in sailing ships from his boyhood and the intricate ways of the Islands were an open book to him. Oc-

casionally he had touched at New Zealand ports. With a cargo of timber from Vancouver, he ran into Nukualofa, in the Tongan group. About this time it happened that Mr. J. C. Reid, of Northcote, and his family took a pleasure cruise in their schooner-yacht Vision. The lure of the South Seas was upon them and the Vision also made for Nukualofa. The two schooners did not pass in the night. The big merry-faced skipper and Phyllis, the pretty girl who took her trick at the wheel and had ex- | plored the mysteries of navigation, appealed to each other and there were happy days for them. Now comes the parting and the suspense. Duty took the captain back to ’Frisco, and the Vision came sailing home to Auckland. THE HAPPY ENDING It seemed as though the brief romance was ended and that seas and the years had come between the two. The captain always cherished the idea of coming to New Zealand some day and looking for the girl. His opportunity came when Zane Grey wanted a skipper to bring The Fisherman to the fishing grounds of the Bay of Islands. Here, let the captain tell the story in his own words. “I looked for her,” he said, “but I could not find her, and then I went up to Whangaroa in the Clansman to look over the harbours. before The Fisherman should go. There it was that I was introduced to her for the second time. She was a nurse in the hospital.” “It was just fate” suggested the reporter. “Call it what you like,” said the skipper, “I had no idea she was there. It is just my big luck.” Not much more is to be said. The pair saw much of each other when The Fisherman went to the Bay of Islands, and they decided to make a match of it. Yesterday, neither of them caring a sailor’s darn that it was Friday, and the first of April to boot, they were married, Captain Mitchell being the best man and Zane Grey an interested spectator. The bride was given away by her brother, Mr. J. C. Reid, and the bridesmaid was Mrs. Edmanson, of Northcote. They bore up under the ordeal wonderfully, and afterwards Captain Mitchell had not the faintest chance of Using the prerogative of the best man. The bride joins the ship at Tauranga. in a few days. After a few weeks’ stay in New Zealand waters. The Fisherman will head for the Marquesas and then back home to Los Angeles. “We are going to have our honeymoon when we lay up for three months at ’Frisco,” said the bridegroom,” “and then, may be, we will come back to New Zealand again on the world cruise which Mr. Grey is thinking about.”