Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-09-24
SNUG HARBOR YARNS
Nine Hundred Ancient Mari
ners Spinning Them Out.
DEEP-W AFTER SAILORS
MANY COMMANDED THE OLD TEA
CLIPPERS
How a South American Naval Bat
tie Was Won by Dutch
Cheeses.
DEEP-WATER SAILORS

Written for The Evening Star by Bassett Stanes.
Imagine nine hundred ancient shellbacks,
with their faces tanned and Scared by the
winds of all the world, who have nothing
to do except sit around on the grass lawns
IN the sunshine, watch the ships go by on
the Kill Won Kull and spin yarns.
This is what you have at that stately IN
stitution on Staten Island called Sailors
Snug Harbor, where the finest possible ma
terial for the sea stories of a hundred
Marryatts and Michael SCOTS and Clarke
Russells and Fenimore Coopers is running
to waste.
They are real deep-water sailors of the
old type. Many of them look as if they
might have sailed with Paul Jones or COM
manded a venture for Mistress Warrington
of Virginia. Many of them actually did
fight for Farragut, sail in the famous old
tea clippers and the Blackball packets, and
lay their ships yardarm to yardarm with
pirate junks in the China
Fragments Of Thrilling Stories.
If you listen to the talk of half a dozen
of these deep-water veterans for a few mo-
ments you will surely catch such remarks
as the following:
when l was in the bark Mary Perkins,
out O. Frisco in u. we put into the port OF
Guayaquil, an there was revolution go
ing along the levee. an the bullets fell
on our decks just like hall
When we was down to Greytown, MIC
aragua, we caught a big ground shark anc
cut him open, and what dye suppose we
found?'
Body of man.
'Lady's earrings?'
'Yere wrong Mebbe We won't believe
me, but it's gospel truth, we took out six
dozen milk tins, three dozen soup and bully
tins, three old dust pans, two brooms and
a mariners overcoat. How did they get
there? Why, the shark couldn't tell, ana
$50 hanged they was-hanged by the
neck at the yardarm; and there warnt no
more piracy in them waters for
But the king O that ere island cottoned
to me something amazin. Day after the
wreck he offered me the pick o his wives
handsome huzzies some OF em was, too
Like the patrons of Fultah Fishers board
ing house, these sailor men at snug Har-
Dor lie fearsomely about the purple seas
that gave them scanty bread" If you want
story about a sea serpent with seven
heads, you can get 1t from any one OF
half hundred marine Munchausens. But
there are more veracious chroniclers who
spin yarns which are at least credible, If
not always strictly true.
A Brush With Chinese Pirates.
Such a one was an old Scandinavian mate
who told an exciting story of Chinese pi-
rates.
I'm 81 I shipped as mate aboard the
Boston bark Cedar, bound from Newport
to Hong Kong. AT that time lots of Chi
nese pirates used to put out in junks, pre-
tending they were honest traders or fisher
men, and wait for the ships expected at
Hong Kong.
. "We sighted three of these craft when
we lay becalmed about hundred miles
fl ON port. Their decks simply swarmed
with men, and they had lots of the queer
est looking guns you ever saw, with mouths
just like grinning dragons.
I'VE lay there, unable to move, and the
Cinnamon came down on us mighty quick.
rowing with long sweeps. Two of them at
tackled on the starboard quarter. and