The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1904-09-01
HOAXES OF THE SEA.

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 cor
respondent scattered the tidings broad
cast and made many homes wretched
with the false story of 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 lasting impression on those
well-meant utterance of Broadway
of Boston of the Inman Line, which
bound to Liverpool, did not ''arrive
ment, the ship having nearly 2O0 pas
sengers. One of the relatives of a
young woman on board was nearly out
of his head worrying over her probable
fate. when a friend, Broadway mer-
chant, 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 being towed into Halifax"
This queer attempt at easing the
strain of the situation did inestlmable
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 telegraph lines
buzzed with the glad tidings. 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 its fears were unbound
ed. The city officials dragged cannon
to the City Hall Park and fired them
off. People knelt in doorways IN the
streets, and services of thanksgiving
were held in !number Of churches, in
Guiding Trinity. Alas the story told
by the Broadway merchant was untrue.
The City of Boston never reached her
destination. On February II, some
days before the news of her safety was
widely celebrated, a board bearing her
name and 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 YES
sci had gone down in storm and what
a fearful time they had in getting to
land. kindhearted landsmen provided
for their wants, and then, few days
later, sergeant of marines appeared
on the scene and claimed the two men
as deserters from an American war YES
sci. They hadn't even wet their feet in
getting ashore.
\ favorite way of penetrating ma
rine hoax is to cast overheard a bottle
containing "a message from the dead
A great many message laden bottles
have been picked up at sea" in some
corner grog shop and turned over to the
authorities as part of CHASTITY joke.
English Lloyds has a standing reward
for the arrest and conviction of such
cheerful idiots, but the authors of these
alarming messages usually conceal thelr
identity and few are caught.
One canard maker however, was dis
covered in London five years ago. He
wrote Il note giving an account of the
sinking of a Clyde bark, with the usual
postscript that all hope was gone, and
one Of his acqnaintances, who had more
/ brains than are usually found among
the friends of fools, exposed him. The
indignation was so great that a mob of
londoners wanted to lynch him, a thing
unheard of even in the most brutal
cases of murder in London. The fel-
/ low was sentenced to a year, and when
he was released he took the precaution
! to go to sea, where, with the aid of a
capstan bar and a marlingSpike. ju-
diciously applied, they made man of
him.
The reported loss of the Red Sta1
Line steamer Nederland was bottle
hoax that cast the people of the civil
lied world into gloom some twenty
years ago. The ship was bound to this
city from Antwerp, and almost due
here when bottle containing the de.
tails of her alleged loss was picked uI
and its message made public. There
were over 100 passengers on the vessel
many of them we'll known New York.
ers. The bad news quickly spread, and
one poor German WHO had his wife and
seven children on board blew out his
brains with shotgun. The ship turn
ed up all right without the parting of a
ropeyarn, just as the Cedric did, and a
number of families throughout the
country who had hastily donned mourn
ing constituted themselves committee
to find the author of the hoax, but with
out success.
AS general thing, the bottle fraud
authors prepare messages about ships
that are overdue or supposed to he lost.
The failure of the White Star Line
steamer Naronic to flush her trip from
Liverpool to this Port, ten years ago,
was a fruitful medium for the heartless
work of the hoax message writers. Sub
sequent developments showed that the
only authentic tidings from the Ma
ronic that ever reached land came from
the masters of the British steamer Gov.
entry and the Norwegian ship Emblem,
each of whom saw at different points
at sea lifeboat marked with the name
of the lost craft. Nobody ever dis.
covered how the Naronic went down.
The message writers attempted to tell
all about it, however. One of these
messages, which was contained in a
champagne bottle that had several corks
tied about its neck, was washed ashore
Nat Ocean View, a summer resort neal
the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. 1t
bore what purported to be the sigma
%