Arizona republican., 1904-05-08
CARDS ON A VOLCANO.
A Yankee Shippers Yarn of Cruise on
 a Ship With a Burning Cargo.

T can't say I have ever played old
 sledge on top of one of those mines | like the Russians say blew up the Pe- | tropavlovsk, but I have played high, low, jack day after day on top of a
 thing quite as dangerous, and with the i fuse lit, at that"
 lt Thus it was that Capt. J. A. Ans bury, master of the Roanoke, the big
 gest wooden sailing vessel afioat, which ! has just reached Baltimore after q cruise of 22, 900 miles that took 15S days
 started his yarn about the remarkable adventure of the vessel with fire rag ing in her cargo of coal, says a dis patch to the New York Sun.
 We loaded with 5000 tons of coal at Norfolk for the government to be deliv cred at Mare Island and we got around the Cape in good shape and were con- graduating ourselves upon what an easy thing we were having of it. when,
 on the second day out of a west coast port where we had put in for supplies, the mate rushed into the cabin with the i pleasant information that our cargo was a6re.
 Now, a fire in a cargo of soft coal is the meanest kind of a calamity that ! comes to a ship, especially when bad weather sets in as it did that very day, with winds so heavy that we couldn't turn back and make for the port we had left forty-eight hours before. When reached deck smoke was a-pouring out of the for'rd hatch and it was that nasty black and blue that showed it had
 got a good headway and was making gas faster than a coke oven of hund- red batteries.
 We got steam pump to work as soon as we could, but every minute | expected to hear a roar and see the ship lifted toward the sky, but I kept a pretty calm front-as calm as I could. anyway-and set the crew to work in two hour shifts. Two men worked the
 nozzle for the pump and two others
 manned the wind pump to bring out the
 water that the other fellows were pumping in. That water went into
 the hold at about temperature of
 about fifty-five degrees and came out at ninety-seve degrees.
 "The fire was amidships but we couldn't SC it. I figured that the mass l of live coals lay about the midle of the cargo and I pretty near prayed we
 might hold it there, for if a bit of flame ever got to the top it was a fond fare
 well to the Roanoke and everybody aboard.
 "The wind blowed great guns for two days and then came a week of calm and all the while, night and day. were keeping a steady stream of water go- ing into the hold and another coming out.
 At first the thing got so onto our | nerves that if a seaman dropped his knife at mess the rest of them would
 howl. The slightest noise aboard ship
 set every heart to qual1ing. | But this wore off and after the frs. four or five days most of us could sleep 1 awhile each day. Finally we got so used to the danger that we actually l went on with our card games under the 1 awning we had swung over the quar- | ter deck.
 ITO relate this seems all simple enough, but when you come to thini,
 of it it isn't so funny as it might be | There we were. actually sitting on. tor of volcano and trying to get our op- ponents' jack and count game as
 though everything was ship shape and we were bouncing along under twelve
 knot breeze.
 Tt was sixteen days before we reach- I ed San Francisco and then came the
 reaction. No sooner had we pulled into harbor than six of the crew took to
 their beds, utterly broken down. 1 Their nerves were in the condition
 of man who is recovering from a long debauch. They were about as l pitiable a lot of seamen as I have ever
 seen, and I've seen a good many 1 That fire reduced to coke about five l hundred tons of my cargo and so ef
 fective had been our constant pumping
 that the dreaded blaze never came ] within three feet of the top of the coal l Not a timber of the Roanoke was ever
 discolored by the fire. But 1 don't I want to ever see another cargo of coal | again, although I may have to, I SUD- pose"
 Capt. Amsbury has sailed more than