| Show Adventurers Adventurers' Club Killer Ship S By FLOYD GIBBONS S Famous Headline Hunter IVE 1 VE told you stories about human killers and Ive I've spun you youL L 1 tales about animal killers This i is the story of a killer ship Carl L. L told me this story It happened to him in 1902 when he ho found himself broke and out of a n job ob in South Africa and signed on a windjammer for a n trip to South America The windjammer was the bark Albatross which had just brought a load of corn over from Buenos Aires and was going back to the same port in ballast There It would pick up a load of or wheat and return to East London Cape Colony That suited Carls Carl's plans so he sailed away one morning at daybreak and six weeks later after alter an uneventful trip the Albatross entered the Plata river and docked at Buenos Buenos- Aires So far everything had gone smoothly but they had no sooner begun loading grain for the return trip than It became evident that the Albatross was none too seaworthy a craft When Then the sand ballast ballast ballast bal bal- last had been taken out of the hold water began coming in through the seams That didn't bother the captain any to speak of He Be just let lct the ship settle in the mud and when the mud got into the seams and closed them up he began loading again Many a sailor would have quit that ship then and there But Carl wanted to get back to South Africa He stayed on for the return trip but the ship was hardly out of the river again before he began to regret it These Stowaways ys Were Not Pleasant Ones Ortes The weather was fair enough at the moment It was late June and the old tub was wallowing along before a fair breeze But it was the rats that bothered Carl Swarms of them had come aboard while the ship was loading grain and now they were threatening to take aver over the ship We must have had half hail the rats in the Argentine with us Carl says They were everywhere We We found them in the pockets of our clothes clothes in in our bunks bunks and and in short everywhere we looked While we were lying asleep we were awakened by the animals crawling across our faces and we had to lie perfectly still while we felt their cold feet and tails tickling our noses Many a time I stepped on one when I got out of my bunk to go on watch The lats rats were bad enough but as they neared Africa things became worse A heavy gale blew up and it quickly increased to hurricane force The Tho seas mounted until they seemed to be fifty feet high and the old ship with nothing but a storm up was plunging ahead at half haU again her usual speed For a day the ship withstood the buffeting of the gale but that night nigh y along about eight bells the carpen carpenter er sounded the bilges and reS re- re 5 S A Heavy Gale Blew Up and Quickly Increased to a Hurricane ported to the captain that there was four feet of water in the hold The captain ordered all hands to the pumps No Life Preservers Preservers They They Must Stay With the S Ship lip The crew worked grimly at those pumps pumps because because they knew they were working for their lives Four feet of water says Carl is bad badin badin badin in any ship in a storm It was especially bad in this rotten old tub We had no life lie preservers and the lifeboats were so rotten that they would fall apart i if any attempt was was made to raise them off their cradles S The men pumped for two hours and the carpenter sounded the bilges again This time there was five ve feet of water in the bilges In spite of all alIthe the men could do it had gained a foot They kept on pumping but but the captain was worried At three o'clock in the tue morning when the crew was so exhausted that hardly a one of them could stand up to the pumps he called them all into his cabin Wet and hungry they trooped in and the captain told them bluntly that he didn't know what to do and aDd wanted to get the mens men's opinions There were two courses they could follow Land wasn't far distant In Iti the sky t they ey could see the reflection of the Cape of Good Hope light They could keep on pumping and try to make port or they could run the ship on the rocks giving the men a chance to be washed ashore if iI they escaped being killed by DY the w wreckage or pulled to their deaths by the undertow Mate l Discovers What the Trouble Was There wasn't a a chance of keeping the ship afloat until they reached port The men all knew it The chief mate was for piling the boat baat on the rocks and the men agreed with him The ship was turned about anc and headed for the sh shore share re And we were a silent crew as we worked says Carl for we knew that in a few hours we would crash crash and and then what But suddenly the mate made a discovery Before the bark had been turned toward shore she had been running on her starboard starboard starboard star star- board tack tacit with the port side deep down do in inthe the water When the they came about the wind and the seas were astern and she camo up on an even keel And now the mate looking over the port side saw a stream o o water coming out of a great gap In the hull hun of the tue ship at a point which had bad been submerged a few moments before beCore It was the cause of oC all their troubles A piece of floating timber had struck the side of the ship and aud rammed a hole in inthe inthe inthe the rotten planking The wind was dying out by that time The carpenter rigged a scaffold over the side filled the hole with bags of oakum and nailed a heavy canvas over it We hove to says Carl and it was with a different dif dil- ferent feeling that we manned those pumps again It was six abc in the morning now and we pumped until eleven cleven when the pumps began suckIng sucking sucking suck suck- ing air and we knew she was empty We were all tired but we were happy Six days after that we entered the harbor of East London where the whole town turned out to view the battered looking wreck as asIt asit asit it came limping in And thus ended that never forgotten voyage of the bark Albatross 2 Service |
