The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-02-13
ROM4NCEs OF THE SEA.
Inexhaustible, Enough Some Strange
 Happenings of Recent Days-Reports in
 the International Language of the Log Book That Furnish Plots for Novel
tFrom the New York Times }

Book That Furnish Plots for Novel
 Writers.
 tFrom the New York Times
 All romance has not faded from the sea, nor, indeed, has any considerable part of 1t, although this is the age of steam navigation, and the romance of
 triple screws, of mighty horse power and of narrow waisted, mastless racers
 has not come yet, though it doubtless
 will come some day.
 But the sea has not been divested of it's marvels, it's mysteries, or it's trage- dies. It's ever changing bosom is still replete with thrilling adventures, pie |trresque incidents and much else that
 goes to fill up the pages of maritime records and the debit sheets of the ma rlne underwriters.
 And rarely week passes which does not supply from this fruitful source some material of which sea romances are made. Frequently these come in the shape of an unfinished chapter from
 some unWritten sea tragedy-ofttimes merely a pitiful finale with the preface unrecorded and unknown and the mid dle chapters to be guessed at Such, for instance, is contained in the brief report made not long ago by Cap tain Messenger of the Nova Scotian
 bark Bertha Gray upon that vessels
 arriving at this port The report was
 made in the unemotional language of the log book and read as follows: On June l. while in latitude 95 degrees 15 minutes north, longitude 73 degrees 20 minutes west, passed a ships boat full of water, with corpse floating about
 in it. Boat about twenty feet in length, American build, painted white inside and out.
 No other information could be had. the vessel simply having passed the
 object in the locality named. But what other hints are needed to aid the imagi native writer to weave a romance around the fate of the lone castaway, and to picture the form in which death
 came to end the torture of the sufferer? {?
 GAN BUILD STORIES. There are many of the class who go down to the sea in ships who will not require much help from the imagination to piece out the tragedy. From their
 own memories many can extract some vivid pictures of dire suffering, long drawn out; of slow fooI-. hours drag ging by; an open boat, drifting help less, manned by pale faced, wretched castaways, to whom every moment
 brings agony of hunger and more mad dening torture of thirst. With these, of course, help was near, but it lay be- yond the skirt of vision, and in many cases it did not come until the last decimal of hope had gone.
 Somewhat similar to the case cited, is | that recorded by the Marine Journal, of this city in a recent issue. A grewsome | spectacle, the paper says, was passed 1 at sea by the steamer Buckminster, about forty miles southeast of Cape | Henry, recently. It was an uplifted | hand, raised above the water, with the fingers and thumb reaching upward. | The wrist and lower half of the forearm
 were below the surface. The hand and piece of arm were swollen, as if they i had been in the water some time. The Buckminster passed close to the object, | to see if it was attached to a body. It was probably the limb of mariner | lost at sea.
 A TRUE STORY. l He SlOry tOlu Dy tue olilCeTS UT lHe
 bark Belpore, brought here by the
 cables and reproduced in a half dozen lines, is in itself condensed novel of 1 the sea. A man falls overheard during 1 the height of Cape Horn gale. boat | is lowered and sent to the rescue, and | after many hours of waiting for the | boats return, the Belpore abandons | hope of rescue, and, being short handed, | heads up the coast for Chili port hop ing to replenish her crew. There are days of baffling head winds and seas, | and heart breaking work by a short | handed crew. and then after many days | the vessel reaches harbOr to find her
 old men, who had been cast upon the | waters. The boat had picked up the
 man who had fallen overheard, and,
 having lost the Belpore in the thickness steered for the coast of South America A northbound steamer rescued the men
 and landed them all in port few days
 before the arrival there of their own ship.