AN OCEAN EMERGENCY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8100, 27 August 1904, Page 2

AN OCEAN EMERGENCY.

(Springfield Repulhean.) The " Captains Courageous," who sail out of Gloucester ior the Grand Banks year i after year, successfully meet many emergencies tha* call for courage, quick thought and prompt action. But so used are they to perform deeds of heroism that they are apt to think it is all in the day's work, while they are so anodest and unassuming that it is exceedingly difficult- to geb any of them to tell of their oftentimes wonderful experiences. •The writer met last summer a certain Captain Charles Martin t who for forty years, winter and summer, has been sailing to the Grand Bank 3, facing ali sorts of weather. Last winter his schooner left the rest of the fleet the very day before they were frozen up in the ice pack, and reached Gloucester after the hardest tussle he ever experienced with ice, sleet and snow. The deck of the vessel was frozen solid with ice from rail to rail, the ice being so thick on the rigging thabinot a halyard nor a sheet could be started. The crew had completely used up their supply of stout oak mauls, with which every vessel making the winter trips to the banks. is provided, to pound the io© off the decks and rigging, so she came most of the way under bare poles, even the small trysails having 'been blown away, and as the sheets could not be trimmed, th-are was nothing to do but to run before th- wind till the gale abated. But the captain told of this experience as if it were the most ordinary thing in the -vporld — about on a par with the trials of a city man who has to walk a block, perhaps, night and morning, through a snowstorm to a wellheated, comfortable trolly car. A friend a-sked Captain Martin to tell of the way in which he met an emergency, and was IVSTBTTaCEXTAI, nc SA.VIXG SOITE 350 r_.OPl.__ from ultimate starvation and possible shipwreck. After some urging he consented to tell bow he steered some 300 miles into port ai disabled 1 5000-ton steamship which had lost her rudder ; using his little 80-ton schooner, less than SO feet in length oyer all — not as large as a cup defender — as a rudder. When ths story was finished he admit-cd that he believed there was no record of such a feat as his having been performed either before or since. Ifc " happened that one February, about thirty years ago, Captain Martin, with a- crew of sixteen i men, on the 80-ton schooner Joseph Chandler, left Glouce-ster with six other vessels of the v/int-er fishing fleet, bound j for the Grand Banks. The Joseph Chand- ' ler was obliged' to put- into Halifax, N.S., to land one of her crew, who fell ill, and was delayed there a. few hours while another man was being shipped in his place. After leaving Halifax they had an uneventful trip till they reached a- point about 180 miles south-east of Sable Island, when they righted a laa-ge steamer flying a signal showing that she was disabled and needed assistance. Ifc happened that when Captain Martin brought his quadrant up on deck j,ust before noon that day he had laid it down on tho roof of tho house fcr a moment before he "shot the sun," and one of tha crew, jrrho was overhauling the main sheets carelessly threw tlv- heavy coil of rope down on top of the quadrant, so injuring it that it could not be used. The previous day a snowstorm had obscured the sun. and the} were obliged to rely on dead reckoning to tell their position. So when the steamer was sighted Captain Martin headed for her more in the hope of obtaining a- spare quadrant from her captain than with the idea tint his little schooner could be of any ascistancs to a vessel forty times her size. She proved to be the Anchor Line steamer India. 3000 tons, bound from Liverpool to New York, with three hundred passeneers and a crow of about fifty men. Captain Martin got cne of his dorks overboard and in a- heax-;/ se-a board*d the India. When he reached the deck he found nearly all the passengers gathered, who ALREADY HAILED HIM AS THEI_t DELIVERER. Tlie India's captain told him that they had 'experienced gales and heavy ecas ever since leaving Liverpool, and that ten days beforo a tremendous sea had carried away their rudder. An attempt had teen made, to rig a jury rudder, by using the main yard with heavy planks lashed to it, but almost ' ao soon as it had been put over the stern a s.a had carried it away, and the -teainer had been left rolling in the trough of the ©ea, which was so rough that she was in constant danger of foundering. The few sails they had been able to set could not keep her head to the wind, and although her engines were in perfect order she was as helpless as a log. ..The officers were worn out with anxiety, for they had drifted far out of the path of steamers, and the Joseph Cha_idlar. was the first vessel sighted ' since the accident had occurred. The passengers had given themselves up for lost, the vessel rolling _o heavily that for ten days not a meal had been eaten from the tables, and ifc was with difficulty that they .could move about by holding on to the rail or crawling on all-fours. An idea had come to Captain Martin whilo listening to the India's story, and at its conclusion he offered to steer the steamer into Halifax, N.S., 300 miles away, if the India's captain would tow his schooner as a rudder. The steamship captain, resplendent in his. gold lace, laughed at the idea. He had never teard of si?ch a thing— the India would tow the other vessel und.r — the schooner was too small to change the steamer's course; the hawser would foul the screw; ifc would cost too much, etc. His proposal was that the Chandler should sail back to Halifax and report him ; so the owners could send tugs out to tow him in and thus save money. Captain Martintried to convince him of the folly of such a' course, of the difficulty the tugs would' have in finding a drifting vessel; but the India's captain was obdurate, so Captain Jfartin finally gave it up, and climbed over the rail, jumped into his waiting dory, and rowed back to his schooner, which then ' i ' • • • STOOD ABOTT ON HER WAY TO HALIFAX. But ' when the passengers saw the schooner .leafing they raised such a protest that their captain yielded, and called through his trumpet to Captain Martin to come back and give his method a trial. The Chandler came about- again and was hove to close under the India's, stern. A dory was again launched from ths schooner, and, manned by four hardy fishermen, came,, alongside and took the end of the email line, heaved into ifc by the steamer's crew, back to the schooner. Then all the Gloucester men hauled away on the small li n « • till they brought aboard the end of the llin cable which had bedh bent to it. The cable was led through the port hawser pipe, and made fast to tbe schooner's windlass bitts. Captain Martin shouted to the India's captain, who stood on the steamer's taffrail, to pay. out 100 fathoms, then make it fast to her stern bitts and gt> ahead easy __. nis engines. glowly the steamer forge* ahetd,

straightening out the cable, everyone 1 on both vessels anxiously watching the outcome. The steamer was. of course, falling off rapidly to leeward, broadsid- to the wind, so Captain Martin, in order to correct this tendency and get her upon her course for Halifax, headed his schooner dead to leeward also, but at a right angle to the steamer's course ; thus pulling her stem still further 'to leeward, but getting her bow head to the wind. In lass than ten minutes she was heading for Halifax, with the schooner, her sails furled, towing astern. When the steamer's stern would go too much to starboard Captain Martin would head the schooner in the opposite direction, hard aport, till the steamer's stern began to turn to port. Then he j would head the schooner sharply i?p to starboard in tie opposite direction again, to prevent the steamer going too far over, i In this way, by ; ZIGZAGGIKG AT BIGHT AXCLES J across her stern, he kept a very fair ! course. The first hour or so the steamer went very slowly! but as everything seemed to be going so well, she kept- increasing her i speed, and by the time darkness fell her j engines were going full speed ahead. The i wind kept increasing also, till, as the Gloucester fishermen say, "It blew some, as it generally does in the winter time." The Chandler was now being towed so fast that her bow, as far sift as h.r foremast, was constantly buried under the green seas, which froze almost as soon _*s they broke, so that in a short time the decks were filled with solid ipe even with her rails, while the spray froze upon her rigging, making each ropo about the diameter of a man's thigh. The crew could do nothing except relieve the men at the wheel, yet her entire crew stayed on deck all night, momentarily expecting the schooner to be towed under or sfcove in by Ehe heavy seas. Yet there was never a thought of cutting the towing cable and abandoning the steamer to her fate. Soon after day broke the stern rail of the steamer was crowded with passengers who cheered their rescuers and shouted their thanks across the tumbling water. And all day, in spite of the biting cold, even the ladies would come out for a few minutes at a time to wave their handkerohiefs. The steamer had reduced her speed when daylight showed the half-buried schooner, but the wind still Jeep, increasing and tbe seas became heavier. One moment the big llin towing cable would be sagging slack in the water and the schooner BOLLLVG HEAVILY IX THE TROT/GH OF THE BEA. Tlie next moment the cable would come taut as a piano string and plunge tha Chandler's bow under with a shock tbat seemed to make her quiver as though she were a living creature. But the staunch little schooner, which had weathered many a winter's gale, withstood the straining and pounding without starting a bolt or seam. Early in the morning of the third day Captain Martin judged they were near Halifax ; bufc ifc was' snowing so heavily that the men on the schooner's bow could hardly maks out the steamer, and the vessels were manoeuvred so that they laid head to the wind, and were thus kept hoveto for four hours, till the weather cleared, when they found themselves in sight of Halifax harbour, having made the run of 300 miies in forty hours. There was no pilot-boat in sight, so j Captain Martin signalled to the India to j heave in half the tow-line, so she could be handled more quirkly, and then shouted to her captain that he would run in without a pilot. And he did, with the English captain standing on the taffrail and calling to liim every few minutes, asking him ii be did not think he had better anchor where he wa?. But he kept on up the ' harbour, till the India's anchor was finally dropped at the inner end of M'Nab's Island. The strange procession had b.en sighted from the marine observatory on Camperdown Hiil, at the harbour's mouth, and the news telegraphed to the, signal station ' on the citadel hill above the town. : Ifc happened to be the sailing .day for the regular steamer for New York, so she came alongside the India and all the passengers were" quickly transferred. In' the bustle and confusion THEY TOJRGOT ABOTT THB PITHS-" they were going to make up for the schooner's crew, and left without even a word of thanks to these brave fishermen who had risked their lives and their vessel to bring them safely to port. Then a harbour tug made -fast to tha India,, the tow-line was cast off, and the Joseph Chandler put about and headed to sea again. She sailed to the Grand . Banks, got her full share of fish, and reached Gloucester again, in spite of all her delays, before any of the other six vessels that left Gloucester with her had returned. The India's owners paid the price agreed upon, arid the money was divided up among the crew according to the number of shares each man held in the vessel. Bub never a word of appreciation came from the grateful passengers, whom these quickwitted, skilful Gloucester sailors had rescued from a voyage that promised to equal \u length that of the Flying Dutchman.