“LOST” SHIP’S RETURN.

Waikato Independent, Volume III, Issue 167, 14 December 1905, Page 8

“LOST” SHIP’S RETURN.

TERRIBLE EXPERIENCES OP THE CREW. Extraordinary stories are told by the crew of the Lalla Eookh, Messrs Lever Brothers’ vessel, which, as stated in cablegrams recently published, arrived at Falmouth from Brisbane, ninety-nine days overdue, after she had been posted as lost. The man who was least concerned on the vessel was the skipper, Captain Crawley. When told that his ship had been posted as lost with all hands, he smiled grimly and said : “ Well, I guess we have done the voyage more under water than over it; for the best part of the time the seas were going right over our bulwarks,” The clothes of the crew, rotted by the wet, hung in tatters about them, their boots were white with the crystallised salt of the sea, and were kept together by pieces of tarred canvas. “ I wish,” said one of them, “ that some of the members of the AntiSmoking League could have endured the sufferings we did when the tobacco ran short. They would then realise what a blessing tobacco is to sailors on a long and trying voyage. We smoked tea leaves and sawdust, and flavoured it with nicotine which we scraped from the insides of our old pipes. Some of us chewed tarred rope, and found it better than nothing at all.” A position practically unprecedented at Lloyd’s has arisen by the arrival of the vessel. She was insured, and after she became overdue as much as £BO per cent, was paid by some who wanted to cover their risk to underwriters. When the vessel was posted as lost, the insurance moneys were paid, and now arises the curious incident of refunding money paid on a ship that has returned after being officially lost. Otherwise the Lalla Eookh becomes the property of the underwriters.