The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-01-01
sw1uM1NG IN BREAKERs.
A Pacific Coast Expert Tells How it Should
 be Done.

shore waves of the mighty sea as things to play with, and who proposes to revol- utionize the life saving service by sub stitutlng brawn and skill for life lines and complicated paraphernala- What a breaker really is not many people really know. Major Blakeney, who has been for years with the government life saving station, is one of those who ought to know.
 "A breaker is not exactly a wall of water" he said. Tt is rather a great roll of the sea. It starts miles and miles away as a wave, gathering force and gaining speed as it rolls, the great volume of water. tons and tons of it, turning over and over upon itself. Fin ally, as the sea bottom rises to form the sandy beach the space for the giant rolling mass of water becomes contract ed and it breaks-breaks not from the top of the roll. but from the bottom, breaks with force that makes the rush of cannon shot seemed trif1ing. The top of that breaker, containing volumes of water big as houses, is thrown for ward at terrific speed, forming what is known on the beach as a 'comber A boat caught at the time the breaker is formed is carried forward at rate of easily fifteen miles an hour. A mass of water like that is solid, is inelastic. A man caught squarely under such a comber would be killed when it struck him-killed as he would be if he stood under a trip-hammer as it fell.
 Tt is not breaker at the beach that is dangerous; it is the breaker away out that Is the power. By the time it reach es shore it is merely foam. A man drowned in breakers like that never comes ashore. His body Is never found. He sinks and stays. The water in its rolling picks up the sand from the bot tom until the roller is heavily charged with sand. A man who gets into that water gets sand in his lungs. ears. and nostrils, in all his pockets, in his shoes, under his cloths, in evry possible crew ice, until he is ballasted so that he sinks Forever
 Breakers are not made for men to breast, whether they be swimmers or not"
 Yet the King of the Breakers thinks his subjects are easy to rule when un- derstood.
 Personally, the King of the Breakers is a commonplace-look man of or dinary build and wearing ordinary whiskers. He is a doctor, member of the Turner societies and the Schuetzen sections, a good German citizen who loves to drink beer and swim in blue salt water. His name is Dr. F. Riehl.
 T learned 4low to take the breakers by watching the duck" said the doctor. Tt is very, very easy. The heavier and larger the breakers the better like it. Just so it is with the duck. Watch one of the water fowl any time. As the bird swlms inshore and the breaker comes the duck disappears. Look again when the breaker passes and you will sda tAe duck calmly swimming on the smooth water beyond. That Is the way I do. It'sSso simple that 1t is hardly worth telling about, Any good swim mer may be taught in a few hours how to go through the breakers.
 ''This is the way I do it: Going out from shore I run through the first small waves as far as I can breast them, or until the water takes me off my feet. Then I swim straight on toward the breakers. When one comes I dive just before it comes to me. I go under it and come up in the smooth water beyond, There is always smooth water back of breaker, and always must be- any man who has been much around | the sea can understand that. l swim l on through the water until the next | breaker comes. I take 1t the same way. | On I go through all of them. After a | man runs out until he is off his feet | there are never more than eight or nine | breakers ahead, so it is really an easy | matter to get out where the waves are ordinary in size and force, and where any good swimmer can take his ease for hours"
 And as to coming in again?" we asked.
 "Ah, there you have me-" said the physician; that Is little more diff cult-much more difficult A man must keep his head. He must not get what you call 'rattled. With presence of mind any good swimmer ought to come In through the breakers come in, not ahead of the breakers, but on A. sIanting course. When the breaker hears me I turn quickly and dive-just like the duck again. I go under the breakers in the opposite direction from my general course for shore, but on coming up again I turn for shore at once until the next breaker comes That I take the same way, and so on until I can get on my feet and run for shore. Because of this constant turn Ing it is not easy to take line from a ship to the land, but it is easy enough to carry one from the shore to the ship, which is all that is needed in the life saving service"
 To carry q line out through the break CTS any reasonable distance, the doctor says all that is necessary is a small line lighted with corks or oiled, so arranged that men on the shore may pay it out as the swimmer proceeds, taking care that there shall not be slack enough to