The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-04-27
CAPTURED BY VERMIN.
Plight of the Ship America While Be.
Gained in the Tropics.


Drifting about on tropical sea, under
boiling sun, in vessel laden with a cargo
of half-cleaned bones, is an experience MOI
to be envied, and the crew of the italian
bark America, which arrived yesterday a.
pier Y, South wharyes, will probably prefer
a cooler climate and cleaner cargo fol-
their next cruise. Seventy days ago the
America left Buenos Ayres, the only
freight then available being bones of the
cattle killed at the great slaughter-houses
of the beef extract manufacturers in the
Argentine republic. Cattle are cheap
down there and the butchers are not over
careful in removing the meat from the
bones. Consequently the bones which
filled the hold of the America when she
left the River Plate were half covered with
scraps of meat not yet in a condition OF
decay. There was meat enough beneath
the matches to set a good-sized beef sausage
factory up in business, says the Philadel-
phia Review.
Matters were measurably pleasant aboard
the America until she entered the tropics
on her northward voyage, but when the
hot sun began to beat down upon the deck
it made bad mess below, and soon the
hold was swarming with vermin as even
the much travelled crew and the venerable
Captain Ferrari had never seen before.
Every nook and corner OF the ship above
decks and below as infested by the pests,
who made no distinction between fore
castle and cabin. So long as there was
food for them on the bones in the hold
they concentrated their energies there, but
when they had cleaned and polished the
bones the vermin advanced upon the crew,
and also attacked the ships stores of pro-
visions.
While the wind held fair and each day
shortened the distance to port the suffer
ing crew had some relief to which they
could look forward, but their discomfort
became despair when the wind failed them
completely on the equator and left them
rolling upon CLASSY sea for full two weeks
without wind enough to break the column
of smoke that rose from the cooks galley.
For fortnight the crew fought the vermin
with every means they could devise.
Every poison that the ships medicine
chest contained was tried, but the only APP
parent effect was an increase in the num-
bers, ferocity and activity of the pests.
Until the wind again filled the America s
sails and brought her to a cooler climate,
there was no relief for the sufferers. Be-
fore the vessel reached her moorings in
this port, the vermin had completely disap-
peared, having taken refuge from the cold
in the crevices and seams of the ship.
Never was a change of climate more well
come to sailors than when the crew of the
America left behind them the vermin-
breeding heat of the tropics.
Captain Ferrari is in his seventy second
year, and for half century has been a
master mariner. He has been in command
of the bark America ever since she was
launched at Castellamare, Italy, in 1877,
and the present crew has sailed with him
for sixteen years. Captain Ferrari declares
that if he ever sails with another cargo of
fresh bones, he will turn a few South
American ant-eaters loose in the hold.