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Produced by: Annie McGuire
PUBLISHED WEEKLY. NEW YORK, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1895. FIVE CENTS A COPY.
A CARGO OF BURNING COAL.
BY AN OLD SHIPMASTER.
The reader may think that while coal must be a dirty cargo it is in other respects an innocent one; but there is no shipmaster who does not dread a long voyage with this kind of freight, for many a fine vessel has been lost owing to the coal taking fire through spontaneous combustion; therefore the greatest care is exercised in carrying it, and whenever the weather will permit, the hatches are opened in order to give the gases in the hold an opportunity to escape. The regular coal-carriers are fitted with ventilators set in different parts of the deck, and the holds of the vessels are kept pure and wholesome by turning the gaping mouths of a number of the huge funnels so that the wind will pour into and down them to the interior of the ship, and keep up a circulation by escaping through other ventilators that are turned in a contrary direction.
After reaching about the parallel of twenty degrees south we got a stress of weather for over a week, in which several of our sails were blown away and a number of our light spars were wrecked. All our live-stock of pigs and chickens were drowned, owing to the flooding of our decks, for we sat very low in the water.
On the day that we ran into pleasant weather again we started to take off the hatches, when a gassy, choking smell poured out of the opening. The cargo was on fire. There was only one thing to do--to replace the hatches, bore holes through them, and pump streams of water into the hold, endeavoring to drown the fire before it gained additional headway. All hands were called to the task, and for twenty-four hours we worked for our lives, the crew being divided into relief gangs so that the deck-pumps might be kept constantly going.
There were two boats, the Captain commanding one and the chief mate the other. Each had been provided with a chart and compass, and, in addition to these instruments, the two officers had carried away their sextants in order to navigate by the sun and stars. Into each boat had been stowed food and water, which it was calculated would last about ten days by putting all hands on short allowance; but it was hoped that before the provisions were consumed we would either be picked up by a passing vessel or successful in sailing to Rio Janeiro, distant from us something less than six hundred miles. The Captain's boat being the larger of the two carried the second mate, steward, cook, and eight seamen, while the mate's boat held the carpenter and four seamen--myself included among the latter.
The boats laid alongside of one another while the Captain and mate decided upon the course to be steered; then we separated, made sail to the southeast breeze that had set in, and stretched away into the northwest, the Captain's boat in the lead. The wind gathered strength from the southeast, giving us a following breeze for the port toward which we were steering, and both boats made good weather of the moderate sea then running, sweeping along at the rate of five knots to the hour.
All that afternoon the boats kept within sight of one another, and when night fell not over a quarter of a mile divided us. With the first flush of dawn we swept the expanse of waters, but nothing was to be seen. We were alone. Every little while during the day that followed we would scan the horizon, hoping to lift the long-boat's sail into view; but in vain. We never saw her again, or heard tidings of the twelve brave souls from whom we had parted only a few hours before. That she never reached port is certain; but what her ultimate fate proved, no one knows.
It blew up a gale of wind that afternoon, and I heard the mate say that the storm experienced during the week that was past had recurved, and that we would get it worse than ever on its back track. To prevent the boat from foundering, we unstepped the mast, made a span to it by securing a length of rope to each end, and to the middle of this bridle we bent the boat's painter. Then we dropped this sea-anchor over the bows, and rode to it, the strain upon the painter keeping the head of the boat to the seas that rolled down on us.
When night settled upon the deep it shut out one of the wildest sights of ocean-lashed waters that I had ever seen; but the darkness only intensified the terror, for in the blackness we would feel the frail boat swung with dizzy velocity up and up and up on some mountainous sea, as though she was never going to stop; then, while the great seething crest was roaring in a thousand diabolical voices about us, she would drop down, down, down with a motion that was like falling through space.
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