The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1889-06-12
A FATEFUL VOYAGE.

A FATEFUL VOYAGE.
In the year 1868 I signed papers with
Captain Delano, of the brig Josephine,
for q voyage from Sidney to Auckland
and return. She was an English craft,
and was loaded with general cargo, and
had made many voyages across the New
Zealand Sea. The crew consisted OF
Captain, mate, cook and four men before
the mast, and every one but the cook was
white and spoke English. was then
eighteen years old and just out of my
apprenticeship. should have had q
second mates berth, but the Josephine
carried no such officer. The Captain
stood his own watch, and there were oc-
casions when the mate had to go aloft
with the men. Captain Delano was
good sailor and good hearted man, and
there was nothing in the grub or the dis
cipline to find fault with. We left Sid
ney one morning with fair wind for the
ffteen-hundred-mile voyage, and had any
one predicted the queer adventures and
the tragedies which were to befall US he
would have been looked on as lunatic.
A portion of the story am going to
tell you appeared in some of the Austria
Ian papers twenty years ago, but only a
portion, and that full of errors: 1t was
only month ago that I was asked to
. send nv affidavit to certain facts to q
lawyer at Melbourne, and so the whole
series of adventures is fresh in my mem
ory.
For the first three days out we had fair
winds and a smooth sea, and the brig
made fine progress. At midnight on the
third night the wind shifted, blew up a
squall which lasted half an hour, and then
died away as flat as you please. We were
left rolling on the waves for an hour or
two, but when daylight came the surface
of the sea was without a ripple, while
there was not the slightest breath of air
moving above. The sun came up like a
ball of fire, and the greenest hand aboard
knew that we were in for calm. 1t was
terrible hot by mid-forenoon, and our
humane Captain ordered all hands to
knock off and make themselves as COM
Portable as possible. By noon the brig
was like an oven. The decks were so hot
that even the cook with his tough feet
dared not walk them unshod. Down in
the fo'castle in was sitting, but as it was
worse on deck we had to stand it.
1t was about noon when the cook, who
had gone to the side to throw over some
slops, called out to us to come and see
the largest shark which human eyes ever
beheld. I crawled up from the fo'castle,
always curious to see one of the monsters
close at hand, but expecting that the cook
had greatly exaggerated, and when l
looked over the rail I was astonished.
There lay shovel-nosed shark of such
dimensions that I dared not credit my
own eyesight. He lay parallel and not
over ten feet away, and when, after a
few minutes, Captain and all hands had
reused UP to look at the fellow, we got
his exact length by tape line along the
deck. He was thirty-two and one-half
feet long, with jaws capable of cutting a
bullock in two at one snap. The only
sign of life he gave was slight move
ment of the eye now and then. He lay
with his great dorsal fin baking in the
hot sun, and so near that we could see
every little detail. All agreed that he
was the largest shark any one had ever
seen, although all of us had sailed in the
warm seas, and some of the men had
turned away when the cook climbed upon
the rail and said he would stop little
for game with the big fellow. He
meant by that that he would have talk
with him. have met numbers of ships
cooks who claimed to have "made up'
with sharks and were not afraid Of being
hurt by them. The cook sat just oppo-
site the sharks middle, and he bad be-
gun a sort of chant, when I passed for
ward intending to find missile, and
heaveit over and scare the monster away.
I had just found an old bit of iron and
got back to the rail when there was
splash and yell. The cook was in the
water through some careless move of his.
I had my eye on the shark, and his move
ments were like lightning. With one
flirt Of his tail he slowed himself around,
his great jaws opened, and 1 was looking
right down upon him as he took the cook
in clear to the middle and bit him in two
so slick and clean that the upper part of
the body rolled away from the sharks
nose and remained on the surface directly
below me. After half minute it began
slowly to sink, but was not yet out of
sight when saw the shark seize it. As
he grabbed it he rushed away and We
saw him no more.
The tragedy upset us in more ways than
one. Here we were, left without cook
at the beginning of the voyage, and there
was something in his taking off which
aroused the superstition of .the,hands for
&h;ply roo{osp fo1& -