The Savannah morning news., 1904-01-17
HOAXES OF THE SEA.
False Tales of Disasters That Have
Done Much Mischief.

The recent shocking canard of the
loss of the White Star Liner Cedric
was only one of many similar hoaxes.
Among others it is recalled how a
few years ago man turned up on
the Nova Scotian coast and told with
precise establishment how the Anchor
Line steamer City of Rome, then
bound to New York from the Clyde,
had gone down, and how he, with a
few others, who were then not within
ready call, had been saved. A gullible
newspaper correspondent scattered the
tidings broadcast and made many
homes wretched with the false story
of a ship that was never wrecked.
When the authorities sought him the
author of the yarn had disappeared.
Very few of the marine hoaXes are
harmlessly started, but one that made
a lasting impression on those chiefly
affected by it originated in the we'll
meant utterance of a Broadway bust
ness man. When the steamer City of
Boston of the Inman Line, which left
New York on Jan. %, 1870, bound to
Liverpool, did not "arrive OUT in due
time there was great excitement, the
ship having nearly 200 passengers. One
of the relatives of a young woman on
board was nearly out of his head
worrying over her probable fate when
a friend, a Broadway merchant, met
him at Fulton street. He ran up to
the grief-stricken man and babe him
be of good cheer, saying: Il have just
been told that the City of Boston is be-
ing towed into Halifax"
This queer attempt at easing the
strain of the situation did inestimable
harm. In great joy the relative of the
passenger rushed off and told his
friends. Soon it became generally
known that a report of the safety of
the ship had been received. The tele-
graph lines buzzed with the glad It'd
ings. New York had been in gloom
for days over the belief that the ship
was gone, and it went wild with joy
over the supposed discovery that it's
fears were unfounded. The city off,
Gals dragged cannon to the City Hall
Park and fired them off. People knelt
in doorways in the streets, and serv-
ices of Thanksgiving were held in a
number of churches, including Trinity.
Alas, the story told by the Broadway
merchant was untrue. The City of
Boston never reached her destination.
On Feb. II, some days before the news
of her safety was so widely celebrat-
ed, a board bearing her name and a
scrawled message that the ship was
sinking, was washed ashore on the
coast of Cornwall. And the message
proved to be only too true.
Deserters from ships are frequently
hoax starters. A week or so ago two
men landed on the coast of Florida,
near Key West, and told how their
vessel had gone down in a storm, and
what a fearful time they had in get
ting to land. Kind-hearted landsmen
provided for their wants and then a
few days later, a sergeant of marines
appeared on the scene and claimed the
two men as deserters from an American
war vessel. They hadn't even wet
their feet in getting ashore.
A favorite way of perpetrating a
marine hoax is to cast overheard q bot
tie containing "a message from the
dead" A great many message-laden
bottles have been picked up at sea"
in some corner grogshop and turned
over to the authorities as part of the
CHASTITY joke. English Lloyds has a
standing reward for the arrest and
conviction of such cheerful idiots, but
the authors of these alarming mes
sages usually conceal their identity,
and few are caught.
y One cdnard maker, however, was
discovered in London five years ago.
He wrote a note giving an account of
the sinking of Clyde bark, with the
usual postscript thatall hope was gone,
and one of his acquaintance, who had
more brains than are usually found
among the friends of fools, exposed
him. The Indignation was so great
that mob of Londoners wanted to
lynch him, a thing unheard of even
in the most brutal cases of murder in
London. The fellow was sentenced TO
year, and when he was released he
took the precaution to go to sea, where,
with the aid of a capstan-bar and a
q fTt1f
made man of him.
The reported loss of the Red Scar
line steamer Nederland was a bottle
hoax that cast the people of the
civilized world into gloom some TWEEN
ty years ago. The ship was bound to
this city from Antwerp, and almost
due here, when a bottle containing
the details of her alleged loss was
picked up and its message made pub
lie. There were over 700 passengers
on the vessel many of them we'll
known New Workers. The bad news
quickly spread, and one poor German
who had his wife and seven children
on board blew out his brains with a
shotgun. The ship turned up all right
without the parting of ropeyarn. lust
as the Cedric did, and "a number of
families throughout the country who
had hastily donned mourning consti-
tuted themselves a committee to find
the author of the hoax, but without
success.
AS a general thing, the bottle-fraud
authors prepare messages about ehips
that are overdue or supposed to be lost
The failure of the White Star Line
steamer Naronic to finish her trip from
Liverpool to this port. ten years ago.
was a fruitful medium for the heart
less work of the hoax message writer's
Subsequent Developments showed that
the only authentic tidings from the Ma
ronic that ever reached land came from
the masters of the British steamer
Coventry and the Norwegian ship EN-
blem. each of whom saw at different
points at sea a lifeboat marked with
the name of the lost craft. Nobody
ever discovered how the Naronic went
down The message writer's attempted
to tell all about It. however. One OF
these messages. which was contained
in a champagne bottle that had several
corl0s TIED about its neck. was washed
ashore at Ocean View. a summer re-
sort near the mouth of Chesapeake bay.
II bore what purported to be the sigma
ture of a cattlenan on the shin and
related how the ship had struck an ice