OCR Text |
Show Ci CLUB "Death Rides the Waves' By FLOYD GIBBONS Famous Headline Hunter. DID you ever notice, boys and girls, that in all the stories you read about shipwrecks and storms at sea you never seem to hear anything about the fellows who get the worst of it? I mean the boys down below decks in the engine room. Harry Helgesen of Brooklyn, N. Y., tells us about what the "black gang" is up against in a storm at sea. He ought to know, too. Harry ls a licensed marine engineer in steam and Diesel. Harry's big thrill came when he was assistant engineer on the auxiliary steam yacht Ulvira on a hard luck cruise in the Atlantic. The cruise started from Brooklyn for southern waters on February 8, 1934, but they never got very far south. The bad luck started the very first day, Harry says, when the ship grounded on Roamer's shoals in the channel. The crew of amateur ama-teur and professional sailors finally got her afloat again and the ship came back to port and went into drydock for inspection. The hull was found O. K. but they had lost a couple of days. When the Sea Kicks Up There Really Is a Mess. The next start was made in a snow flurry and everything went fine until they got to the open sea. Once there the sails were run up and the engines cut olf. Down In the engine room the "black gang" was getting get-ting things ship-shape. Now when an auxiliary yacht Is under sail things are generally easy for the boys under decks, but just as they were about to bank the fires, Harry says, the chief mate came down and said they were In for "a bit of a blow." And a "bit of a blow" was putting It mildly. Wham! a storm from the north slapped the Ulvira with a broadside that nearly turned her over. In a second all was busy as a beehive in the engine room. "Full steam ahead" came the order from the bridge, and Harry and his gang went into action. Death Signs on the Ulvira's Cruise. Harry ran up on deck to get the smoke stack hoisted. The stack had been let down when the sails were run up and they needed more draft. On deck all was confusion. A boom had snapped under the strain of the gale and the sail and boom were hanging over the side and into the water like a sea anchor. And that wasn't all. Hubert Kueclienmeister, a young Northwestern university student and amateur sailor, had been swept overboard. The huge waves breaking over the rail made rescue impossible. Death bad signed on the cruise of the Ulvira I Harry got his stack up and hurried down the ladder to his station. What he had seen on deck wasn't very encouraging, but his job was below decks, and he went to it. Those engines had to get going or the boat and all on it would be lost. The engine room by now was a mess. The boat was pitching heavily, Harry says, and the huge seas shipped at each pitch started coming down through the bunker plates, hatches and deck houses and filling the bilges with water. "We started the pumps," Harry writes, "but the ashes stirred up by the water kept clogging the strainers and the water kept rising. The engines were going full blast but we didn't know how long that would The Water Kept Rising Toward the Fire. keep up. The boiler plates started leaking from the forcing they were getting and the water in the hold was up to the engine cranks. As soon as the water reached the fires we were through." And the water kept rising. ' It was swishing across the floor like It does in a ship's pool on a rough day. Anything that floated became a menace as it sailed back and forth at breakneck speed with the action of the ship. In all this dirty water full of ashes and debris, Harry and a fireman spent nn hour "diving." Diving in an engine room means going under the water to free the strainer from the debris drawn in by the suction of the pumps. How Would You Like to Dive Into Slimy Water? Just imagine diving in that slimy water wondering if you were going to be swept up against the boilers and scalded to death! Up on deck another fight was going on against the elements as the ship reeled under the shocks of the gigantic waves, but our story is below decks and below decks we stay. The four men in the black gang fought the advancing water for 24 long hours without relief. Once the captain came down and asked if they wanted more men, but the chief engineer knew that a greenhorn would only be in the way and asked for a bottle of rum instead. The rum came down and Harry says Unsaved the lives of everybody on that sbip. The rum gave the exhausted men new life and for the next two hours they worked like madmen. The high point of the water was only eight inches from the boilers. Another inch and It would be the boats, and the boats could never live In a sea like that. But that extra inch never came. Instead, the four men watching watch-ing the water in the ash pits suddenly let up a weak cheer. The water had stopped! The pumps were at last holding their own! After DpatVi's Vicril tVip Rlaclt Ganp- dot Hnntrrv. . -. - -- - & f: J Well, sir, the gang realized then that they were hungry. Harry climbed perilously up the ladder to the deck to search for food. The galley was a watersoaked mixture of food stuffs and kitchen utensils thai slid back and forth across the floor with every movement of the ship. The ship's cook was gone seasick. And the galley fires were long since dead. But that black gang had to eat so Harry fished up a side of bacon and finding some eggs unbroken in the ice box be managed to snare a frying pan and carried his prizes down the ladder again. The U. S. Coast Guard to the Rescue! Two men braced hit then as he held the frying pan over a shovel full of live coals. Harry admits it was the best meal he ever tasted in his life. He admits, though, that he has had better bet-ter service. They picked the food out of the pan with their hands and had coal dust for salt and pepper but it tasted swell. Then came the coast guard and towed the disabled yacht Into Norfolk, Nor-folk, Va., and tbe mid-winter, hard-luck cruise of the Ulvira was history. WNU Service. |