Mariner Returns After 30 Years

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 444, 28 August 1928, Page 12

Mariner Returns After 30 Years

LIEUT.-COMMANDER FULTON

LINK WITH EARLY AUCKLAND Away back in the late ’9os there visited Auckland a sailor on several of the sailers which carried on the intercolonial trade in those days, a Mr. J. •J. Fulton —then a well-known figure at many New Zealand’ ports. Yesterday, after over 30 years, he looked on Auckland again, this time as chief officer of the British steamer Copenhagen. Through roaming the seven seas for three decades, Mr. Fulton has visited a hundred ports, in a hundred different vessels, but he still remembers the years he spent in these waters, and was pleased to recall them, and many other besides, on board the Copenhagen yesterday.

It was the Great War, however, as he modestly hinted, that gave him the great opportunity of rising. Joining the Royal Naval Reserve in 1914 as a SubLieutenant. by 1917 he was LieutenantCommander Fulton, D.S.C., R.N.R., and the same year was awarded the Croix de Guerre with pdlms and mentioned in dispatches for “prompt, gallant and skilful behx#iour.” The return of Mr. Fulton is of singular interest to Aucklanders, because he was associated with Lieutenant-Com-mander W. E. Sanders, V.C. “RAN AWAY TO SEA” Born in Glasgow, Mr. Fulton ran away to sea at the age of 16 and came out to Australia in the barque Millwall in 1890. For the next three years he was engaged in the intercolonial trade, serving on the Gazelle and the Peerless. He was on the latter vessel when she was shipwrecked at New Caledonia. His was the share of more than an ordinary passion for wanderlust, and he relates how he ran away from one ship at Sydney at 11 o’clock one night, and by five the next morning was outward bound in another vessel. He was recaptured later, however, and put to work again by an irate master. That night he made another escape, and this time there was no getting him back. Mr. Fulton joined the full-rigged ship Westland at Auckland in 1893, and returned to the Old Country under Captain Kelly. He saw three and a-half years’ trawling during the war, and was in command of the Grand Duke when the Longset was blown up in February, 1917. Two German mines had been caught in the black kite of the Longset. As both were of the same colour their presence was unnoticed, and the unexpected explosion occurred, which resulted in the Longset being abandoned. It was then that Fulton went to the aid of the stricken crew, “with the prompt, gallant and skilful behaviour” to which attention was drawn by Vice-Admiral Charles H. Dare, M.V.0., C.B. After the cessation of hostilities, Lieutenant-Commander Fulton became chief mine-clearing officer of area S. being the only R.N.R. officer to hold such a position. And now with peace reigning Lieu-tenant-Commander Fulton is back in the tramp service—a service which is liable to take one anywhere on the seven seas, wherever there is a cargo to be lifted. After 30 years he is paying a flying visit to a V>rt he knew long before it had grown to be ranked among the ports of the world.