A Fine Old Sailor.—The Late Captain W. C. Sinclair.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 8, 22 February 1911, Page 8

A Fine Old Sailor. —The Late Captain W. C. Sinclair.

Xn Adventurous Sea-life. — The Days of Clipper Ships and Pirate Junks. (Specially Written for the Weekly Graphic.” by J. Cowan.)

MILLINGTON, February 17. THERJ) was a whole Odyssey of sea adventure in the career of the Union Company vet ran. Captain William C. Sinclair, whose death, at the age of 73, was announced in a cablegram from Sydney this morning. For many years Captain Sinclair commanded steamers of the Red Fucnel fleet, and during his fourteen years captaincy of the Tarawera he was probably the most popular master in the Company's service with the travelling public. He was a rugged, but kindly old Orkney Islander, trained in the grand school of the clipper sailing ships of the now long-vanished type, the beautiful frigate-built ocean-fliers of the whole-topsail and stu’n-sail-boom era, when ships were really ships, and not mere cargo tanks, and when seamen were real seamen and not just bra-—polishers and coal-trimmers. He came of a breed of sailormen that the world is not likely to see again, for the conditions and necessities of their ocean-calling have changed out of all knowledge. When the half-masted flags on the shipping this morning called attention to the passing-away of an old captain of the sea, many reminiscences of the good old skipper were exchanged on the water-front. I have to thank Captain Stott, the Union Company’s marine superintendent in Wellington, and Mr. Kennedy, the Company's Wellington manager, for some most interesting detail- of Captain Sinclair’s sea life, in supplement of my own recollections of t :ent mariner. Most of these pa: . dar> were written»by Captain Sin- « r .im-clt some years ago, when in . n autobiographical mood, and they n..:k- up a sea story of unusual interest and even thrill. For the last ten years or so Captain Sinclair had been ashore, first as the Union Co.'s bui ding superintendent in Scotland, and then as its marine superintendent in Australia, retiring finally from the Company's service in 1901).’ The 111-fated Dunbar. Captain Sinclair first went to sea in 1854, when he was seventeen years of age. He was a native of South Ronaldshay. in the Orkney Islands, and from his childhood he had a eraze for the sea, which his father endeavoured to kill by apprenticing him to a cabinetmaker at Kirkwall. After enduring the cabinet-making life for a couple of years young Sinclair suddenly cast off his shore-fetters, and quite in a storybook fashion “ran away to sea.’’ He found his way to London, and managed to get a berth with the famous shipping firm of Dun an Dunbar, and Son®. He was signed-on on the ship Vimiera, commanded by Captain Green. and in this fine old clipper he made two round voyages to Sydney and back. Then he, with the captain and officers and apprentices, was transferred to the ship Dunbar, of the some line—the Dunbar of unhappy memory that was lost with all hands but one at the Gap. Sydney H ad-, on September 27, 1858. Sinclair just escape.! the tragedy by being transferred to another ship just after his fir«t round voyage to Sydney on the Dunbar. His old captain, who went down with the ehip, was a fine fellow, a gentleman as ■well as a thorough sailor. With Troops for the Indian Mutiny. The next intere-ting incident in Sinclair’s life was his connection with the much-discussed incident of Fir George Grey diverting at the Cape, on his own responsibility. British troops intended for China, and sending them off to India to assist in quelling the Indian mutiny. Mr -fames Collier, in his “Life of Sir George Grey.” discredits the repor* that Grey, on his own initiative, ordered troop* on to India. Instead of allowing them to go tn their original destination to support the British plenipotentiary in

China. Grey, he points out, in his capacity of High Commissioner of South Africa, had no power to divert the troops. However.it seems pretty certain that it was by Sir George Grey’s patriotic and statesmanlike, if unauthorised, intervention that a certain troopship in ■which young Sinclair was serving as third officer was despatched straight to Bombay with time-expired troops from the Cape, soldiers who were being sent back to England. The transport in question took several hundreds of British Tommies out to the Cape from London, and then embarked five hundred timeexpired men, all eager to see Old England again. Stores and water were taken on board, and then, just as the erew were about to heave up anchor and. make sail out of Table Bay, orders came to sail for Bombay and the war. The transport sailed from the Cape on April 27, 1857. Sinclair had proved himself a smart young sailor, for though he had only been three years at sea. he was now third officer. The troopship had a very stormy passage across the Indian Ocean; a steamer, the England, which sailed from the Cape for Bombay the same day lost five soldiers, all her sails, and all her boats on one side. On arrival at Bombay Sinclair's ship was ordered to go up the Persian Gulf to land her troops. She afterwards traded from Bombay up the Persian Gulf, carrying shot and shell and other military stores, till the British Crown took over the control of the East India Company, and consequently all military work. In a Blackball Liner. Leaving the troopship in Bombay—she was lost with all hands only six weeks later-—Sinclair's next experience was on one of the ships of the famous Black Ball line of clippers. He signedon on one of these ships, and sailed for London in her. They were splendid ships, whose memory lives to-day in some of the old sailors’ chanteys, such as the popular “Blow the Man Down.” A Chantey-man sings: “Twas aboard a Black Baller I first served my time—(Chorus) Give me some time to blow the man down! And in that Black Baller I wasted my prime. (Chorus) Give me some time to blow the man down I “Ti« when the Black Baller is clear of the land. The boatswain he bawls out the word of command. T.ay aft.' is the cry. ‘to the break of the poop. Or I'll help you along with the toe of me boot.' ” And so or. for interminable verses. The Black Ball clippers had as competitors many another fine fleet, such as those of Money Wigrain and Green’s. Those were the days when canvas ruled the seas, and when astonishingly fast passages were made by many beautiful ships, both English and American, such as the- Flying Cloud, the Red Jacket, the Bine Jacket (which traded to New Zealand in the sixties), the James Baines, the Donald M Kay, Marco Polo, Lightning, and others. Then the China tea clippers reached perfection about the middle of the sixties — the thrilling racing days. Homeward-bound with the new season's teas A Brush With Chinese Pirates. an adventure in the China Sea®. which then swarmed with pirates, who captured many a ship in those perilous waters and slaughtered the passengers and crews. Leaving hi- Black Ball ship. Sinclair joined a ship which had ls*n chartered to go out from London to Sydney, and then to Hongkong to ship some hundred* of Chinese coolies for the ‘ugnr plantations at Demerara, West Indie*. In those days sailors trading in the Eastern serfs had often to fight for their lives, and all ships' officers had to know something of the handling of earronailes ami swivel-guns, which were then carried on deck by merchant vessels

The story is so interesting that I will give it in Captain Sinclair’s own words, as he told it some time bock:— “ We reached Sydney in due time, and the captain, deeming it wise to be prepared for difficulties, told me to get in a sufficient supply of ammunition, whilst he himself would get the guns. Well, I took the two boats to Mort’s engineworks, and asked the foreman if he had got any boiler punchings. He said he had plenty, so I got about a couple of tons of these unusual munitions of war, and brought- them off to the ship. I then set the men to work making calieo bags to fit the guns, and put from eight to ten pounds of the iron punchings in each bag. We then made flannel bags for the powder. The captain was quite pleased, saying we might get a ehance to try the effect of a shot on the passage up, as there were plenty of Chinese pirates about where we were going. “We got the chance all right. Before we got anywhere near port, a Chinese junk got quite close up to us one night. The wind was blowing hard, and the ship was crashing through the seas, but the Chinaman got up close to the lee quarter and called out to ask if we wanted a pilot. We threw a sky-rocket across her and she sheered off. but kept us well In sight. Next morning the wind fell light, and the sea ran down, so the Chinaman saw his chance. He made a straight line for us under his long sweeps. The junk seemed to be full of men. “ Our guns were put in place on the poop deck, and loaded up, but still we waited to give the fellow- a chance to sheer off. This he did not do. so the captain told me to take the wheel while he stood by the gun. He called out- to me, “Starboard!” then “Steady!”—and bang went the gun. I never saw a more beautiful shot. It went right- between the junk’s two masts. Instantly there was immense commotion on board, and the fellow was only too glad to sheer off, and we had no more trouble with him. Many ships and treasures have been taken in the China Sea, the vessels looted and sunk, and the crews and passengers slaughtered.” Trouble With the Coolies. At Hongkong the ship loaded her coolies and sailed for the West Indies. It was an anxious voyage. The guns w ere kept loaded on the poop, commanding both sides of the deck. They were, of course, only to be used as a last resort, as, if fired, they would kill everyone on the deck; and the payment at Demerara was to be made only for the coolies landed alive. The Chinamen did mutiny three times during the voyage. The third occasion was a very serious rising. The yellow- men had possession of the deck, and the officers aft were cut off from the crew. Mr. Sinclair called out to the sailors to take to the rigging and get across its stays, which they did. “That settled the Celestials little lark,” said Sinclair, narrating the incident. “We drove them all below, and put the hatches on for a time.” Loading sugar at Demerara for Liverpool, Sinclair and many of his shipmates were attacked by yellow fever, and some of them died. He had a very narrow squeak himself. When they put to sea at last they were hardly able to move, or to work the ship, but they reached Liverpool all right. A Perilous Time in the Tasman Sea. In 1864 Sinclair came to Melbourne and joined the steamship fleet of McMeekan, Blackwood and Co., and was in their employ until 1878, when the Union S.S. Company of New Zealand took over the MeMeckan steamers, which ineluded the unfortunate Tararua, afterwards wrecked at Waipapa Point, with terrible loss of life. Captain Sinclair commanded the Tarama for several years. A thrilling experience of Captain Sinclair was a voyage he made to New Zealand from Melbourne about 1868, as chief officer in the old steamer Claude Hamilton. After clearing Base Strait the steamer ran into a very heavy S.W. gale, with a dangerous sea. “We were carrying reefed topsails,” Sinclair said, “and reefed fore-and-afters, and steering so as to bring the ship beam on to the sea. This is always a bad position in heavy weather, and had I been twice to the captain telling him the state of the weather which, by the way, he could of course see for himself by taking a look-out through his door. On the last occasion I suggested we do something to ease the ship, but he did not make any response. I had only just got on to the bridge deck when the steamer was struck broadside on by

a terrible sen, -which covered the whole of the after part of the ship, from the engine-room to the taffrail. TTie afterpart of the ship seemed to have entirely disappeared; but it rose again. Tha wreckage was a sight to behold. The weather bulwarks were gone, and the skylights were swept clear off the decks, along with the captain’s house and the companion, which were smashed up completely. The captain must have been killed on the spot.” With the captain dead, Chief Officer Sinclair had now to take charge. His steamer was in a most perilous position. It was black midnight, and the sea was running very high and threatening to swamp the ship. Water was pouring into the saloon through the great holes in the deck. Sinclair instantly set to work to save the vessel. This is how he went about it: “I took in the top Jail and fore-trysail, also easing the engines. Then I got up a lot of old canvas and spare sails, together with a quantity of boards, and covered up all the holes that were open on the deck. The sea had swept away the steering compass, and with the captain's room went the chronometers and all the charts. I was left with only one spare eampass-card, which I rigged up with a beer ease as a binnacle stand. Charts I had none. The following day we had run into better weather, and ourf speed had increased by 3 p.m. I sighted one of our steamers, the Otago from Hokitika to Melbourne, in charge of Captain McLean, and I signalled to him. He came close to us, and lowered a boat, and came on board, when I gave him all particulars. He reported the accident on arrival at Melbourne.” The Claude Hamilton reached Hokitika safely, and afterwards went on to Nelson and Wellington. Here she was repaired. Many other minor adventures befell Captain Sinclair in the intercolonial trade, of which space will not permit the telling. A Tribute to the Old Sailing Ships. Captain Sinclair was ever a warm admirer of the sailing ship ways of tha past. “I often think,” he once wrote in his diary, “of my stern but sound training in the good old sailing ships. They made sailors in those days, not mere goers to sea. The work was hard, I allow, but for a boy with a strong strain of wildness in him it was healthy and in every way wholesome. The sailing ships at. the time when I first went to sea wera a school where lessons of seamanship were drummed into one in a manner that cannot be practised nowadays, as tha wooden walls of Old England are dropping away. In the East Indiaman, Dunbar and Sons, the Black Ball line, anil others, seamanship was well and thoroughly taught. A young man had to ba smart to keep his place, not to mention his moving upward in his profession. It was very good fortune to sail under the finest navigators of their time, or of any time. In particular I may mention Captain Green and Captain Swanson—thorough gentlemen—as well as seamen of tha first order. But as regards what I may perhaps call the softer side of life, I can say truthfully that I never experienced real kindness and sympathy till I entered the service of the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand; there evervthing seemed changed.” A Remarkable Dive. Here is one of Sinclair's early steamer adventures on the New Zealand coast that is too good to be forgotten. When he was second officer in the s.s. Gottenburg. of Melbourne, in the sixties, the vessel did a busy trade with Hokitika, for those were “the days of gold,” when the West Coast, was the liveliest spot in Australasia. One day he was engaged in transhipping passengers from the steamer to the tugboat off Hokitika. The steamer was drifting broadside on to the sea, so as to give the boat shelter under her lee. Mr Sinclair had made one trip with a lifeboat full of passengers, and was loading up for the second time, when the boat gave a lurch in a sea. Thq steer-oar struck him. sending him head foremost into the sea. The people, both on the steamer and in the boat, were in a state of great excitement, waiting for him to rise. But they eould not see him, until a man on the other aide of tha steamer called out, “There he is, hanging on to a rope over the side!” With the dive he had. taken, Sinclair had gone deep down; the vessel drifting, passed right over him. and so he found himself on the weather side of the ship. He soon got a dry change of clothes, and then finished the transhipping of the passengers. It was just an incident in the day’s work