A SECRET OF THE SEA.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue XX, 14 November 1896, Page 55

A SECRET OF THE SEA.

In the year 1849 the East India Company’s ship, the * Star of India,’ set sail from Madras for London, having on board over 200 passengers, and among them Lord Glenham, General Swift, Lady Artwell and her two daughters, and other men and women of note at Home and abroad. Aside from her general cargo the ship carried treasure to the amount of $250,000. The bankers at Madras figured out that the passengers must have had at least $lOO,OOO among them, while an Indian potentate on his way to be received as a guest of royalty, had a strong box of jewellery and gems valued at so great a sum that no one dared speak it. It was intended that the ship should be convoyed as far as the Cape of Good Hope by a man-of-war, as there were plenty of pirate craft still afloat, but the Government vessel met with a mishap at sea and was detained somewhere, and the ■* Star ’ finally decided to sail without her, and there was little fear bnt that she could take care of herself. Two days out of Madras she was sighted and reported, but that was the last seen or heard of her until the year 1864. The loss of the * Star ’ made a great sensation for several reasons, and when it was finally concluded that she had been lost various vessels were sent in search of her, and every effort was made to ascertain her fate. In 1856 a Malay sailor who died aboard of an English tea ship told her captain that the * Star ’ was attacked and captured by pirates to the south of Ceylon, and that he was one of the men engaged in the attack. He said there were five native crafts, and that they came npon the * Star ’ in a calm and carried her by boarding. The ship make a long and stubborn resistance, but was finally captured, and the pirates had suffered such heavy loss that in revenge they killed everybody to the last child. Then they looted the ship and scuttled her, and the plunder was subsequently divided on an island in the China Sea. Some people believed this story and some said it was absurd. The general idea was that the * Star ’ foundered at sea during a heavy gale. The dying statement of the pirate was never fully investigated for some reason. So far as the investigation went it was proved to be a fact. The pirates had long been scattered, many

were doubtless dead, and the idea of bringing the gang to justice was given up as impossible. In the year 1863 I was one of the crew of the English brig * Swiftsure,’ which was making a survey of the islands to the north-east of Madagascar. At the Chagos group, as we were pulling into land one day, with seven men in the boat, we were upset in the surf and only two of us escaped death. My companion was a sailor named Wallace, and while in a halfdrowned state we were swept along the coast of the island by a current and finally thrown on shore in a bit of a cove. A boat put off from the brig as soon as the disaster was noticed, but only two bodies were recovered. The three others were pulled down by the sharks before the boat got to them. Believing this to have been the sad fate of all five no search was made for the pair of ns cast ashore, and before we had recovered from our exhaustion and prepared a signal the brig had departed for another field. The island on which we were cast is one of a group of nine, and the easternmost one of all. It is likely the same to-day as then, having plenty of fresh water, most of it covered with verdure, and wild fruits, shrimps and shell fish so plentiful that a shipwrecked crew of twenty men could get along there for months. Wallace and I were inclined to look npon the affair as a lark. We erected a hut in the woods, procured fire by robbing two dry sticks together, and after a thorough exploration of our domain, which was not over two miles across in any direction, ate, and talked, and had a pretty easy time of it. We had been on the island about three months, when we awoke one morning to find the sea like a sheet of glass and the air as still as death. The sky was overcast, and yet of a coppery colour, and the birds on the island appeared to be in great alarm. Great flocks of them came in from the sea, and all along the shore the fish were leaping out of the water as if it were polluted. After surveying things for a while Wallace gave it as his opinion that we were in for a typhoon or an earthquake. The sulphury smell in the air inclined him to the latter, and as soon as we had eaten we started for the centre of the island. There was a high hill in the centre, bare of everything but a couple of trees and a few

bushes, and we sought it on account of the tidal wave we knew would surely follow an earthquake. As to a disturbance of the earth we were helpless, except to keep clear of the forest. It was mid-day before anything occurred. The menacing look of the sky and the sea increased, and fish by the thousands drove upon the sandy beach to their death. Jast about noon, when we were wondering what it was to be, the whole island suddenly began to heave and tremble. For what seemed a full minute it was like riding over a choppy sea in a small boat, only the sensation was strangely bewildering and made the head swim.

There was more than one shock, but the first was the most violent and lasted longest. The three or four which succeeded were thrills rather than shocks. They ran through the island from east to west and out to sea, and we beard a chorus of what may be called shrieks of distress from the birds with each vibration. Two or three minutes after the fourth or fifth shock Wallace .stood up and looked out upon the sea to the east and shouted to me :

* Look ! Look ! The tidal wave is coming in, and there’s a big ship on the crest of it.’

I sprang up and followed his gaze. Ten miles away there was a wall of water which seemed to lift its white crest almost to the sky, and to reach north and south as far as I could see. Riding on this crest was a great ship, with her three masts standing erect and some of the yards across. For the first ten seconds the wall to stand still. Then it came rolling on like a railroad train, and almost before I could have counted twenty it struck the shore of our island and swept across it. The island was a good thirty feet above water in every part, while on the hill we were at least 100, bnt all portions save the hill were covered by at least ten feet. I had my eye on the ship alone. It came straight for the hill, but as the wave divided it was swept to the left and struck the earth, and was turned full about. While it hung there the waters passed on, and lo ! at our feet, resting almost on a level keel, was as strange a sight as the eyes of a sailor ever beheld. It was a ship to be sure, but one had to mb his eyes and look again and again to be be certain of it. There was the great hull—there the three masts

—up aloft the yards, and there were scores of ropes trailing about like slimy serpents. From stem to stern and from keel to masthead the fabric was covered with mud and slime and barnacle and sea grass and shells, and as she rested there the water poured off her decks and out of her hold in such a sobbing, choking way as to bring the shivers. Not a word bad passed between the pair of us while the wave raced in and across the island, and the ground below us was clear of the last water before Wallace said : * I think this ends it, and let ns both thank God ! This ship was heaved up from the bottom of the sea, where she must have rented for a good many years, but we’ll have to wait a day or two before we investigate.’ After a couple of hours to let the ground dry out a bit we descended the hill to see what damage had been done. About onehalf of the trees on the island bad been uprooted and carried out to sea, and of our hut not a vestige remained. There was scarcely a stone as large as a ben’s egg on the island previous to the wave, but now we found that hundreds of rocks had been distributed around, while the dead fish were so numerous that we were hours in gathering them up and giving them to the tide to bear away. Two hours after the last shock the sky cleared, the sun came out, and by night the island was fairly dry in all parts. We, however, gave the ship all next day to get rid of her water, and harden in the hot sun. You are prepared to hear, of course, that she proved to be the long-lost • Star of India.' We found that out before we had been aboard of her a quarter of an hour, and later on we had a dozen reasons for believing that that the dying Malay had spoken the truth. I tell you that ship was a queer sight. Her ocean bed had been hundreds of feet deep, and the mud covered everything to the depth of a foot—in some places two or three. Neither one of us had heard of the • Star ’ or her lose, but we knew this wreck to be that of an Indiaman, and we went at it to clear away the stuff and get into her. We were a full week doing this, and at every turn we came across evidences to prove the story of the Malay. Three or four of her guns were yet in place, and from the way she had been knocked about by

cannon shot it was easy to figure that she had made a hard fight and suffered great loss of life before she gave in. Even before we began work we found the auger holes bored io her bottom to scuttle her. The great cabin and every state room had two feet of mud on the floor, and I may tell you that we worked hard for four weeks before we got the hulk cleaned out. In the mud and among the mould and rot we found rusty muskets, pistols, swords, pieces of jewellery, cutlery, crockery, glassware and what not, but in actual money we found only five sovereigns. A part of the cargo had been wool, but we got nothing whatever of value out of it. Indeed, when our work had bsen finished, we simply had a big hulk resting on laud a mile from the beach and were only five gold pieces better off than before. The pirates had swept her clean of treasure, plundering the passengers before murdering them, and we did not find in cabin or state-rooms so much as a single bone of human anatomy. We made the ship our home for six months, and were then taken off by a whaler, and our story was the first news received of the long-lost ship. The English Government sent a man of-war to the island to overhaul the hulk, and mementoes of her have long been on exhibition in the British Museum. Nothing could be more queer than the way we found her, or rather the way she was heaved up by the sea to be discovered. From soundings made to the east of the island in 1867 68 it was estimated that the great ship rose from a depth of over 2000 feet. Nothing but an earthquake could have lifted her from that depth—nothing hut a tidal wave held her up and swept her to our feet.