The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1905-08-22
WHEN THE BENNINGTON GOT
THE CHOLERA HERE IN 1905

Inc Kansas City Journal says: THE
bennington was never what You could
call a lucky ship" said a man who
USED to be in the navy, '-and the ex-
plosion of her boilers was the climax Of
rather checkered history. 1 made one
cruise aboard her, on the Pacific sta
tien, too, and that cruise doesn't stick
IN my mind with any pleasant recol-
iections worth mentioning.
That was the cruise when she took
the Asiatic cholera on board down at
Honolulu, back in 1895 That was a
mean business. Not that the ship was
swept by the cholera, for she wasn't.
But the plugging around in quarantine
that she had to do-all hands in sight
of land for three months, and not a
cnance to get ashore-was job that /
wouldn't go through again for quadru-
pie sea pay
only one hand died of the disease,
an apprentice; but the authorities of
Hawaii and all the ships that drifted in
and out of Honolulu and all the rest of
the Hawaiian ports made a leper of us,
all the same, on account of that one
boys death, and we all felt as if we
might just as well be on the island of
Molokai where they put the Kanaka
lepers.
The cholera got on board the Ben
nington that time in a peculiar way.
1t all came about through the ship
ment of cargo of Chinese coolies for
the Hawaiian sugar plantations to
Honolulu on the steamer Belgic.
ION the way down to Honolulu
cholera broke out among them, but the
deaths were put down to pneumonia
and nothing was said about cholera.
The coolies We're landed at Honolulu
and We're all huddled in the Chinese
quarter.
Through that quarter runs a creek.
The Chinks washed their clothes in
that creek. and it was the creek that
carried the Asiatic plague on board the
Bennington. The way it happened was
this:
1.-THE ship was anchored not very far
from the mouth of the creek. The
weather was pretty hot, and the men
for'ard of the Bennington were per-
mitted to swim after knock off every
evening. They went in one evening
after the cholera had broken out in
Honolulu, and that all hands swim
picked up the cholera for us.
HOY C0oho1
from Georgetown. D. c., who swal-
lowed the microbe, or maybe bunch
of microbes, that flowed into the har-
Dor water from the Chinese creek.
That evening while he was on watch
he began to grab at his middle. They
found him with a CHASTITY look on his
face and pretty nigh all gone. and car
ried him aft to the sick bay. He lived
until about midnight, when he passed
out, dead from as bad case of Asiatic
thing as ever climbed over the side of
a ship.
cit was mighty curious to watch the
effect of that news upon the men
for'ard. 1t gave us a fine chance to
mark a dead line of cleavage between
the game, or, rather, the self-contained
men, and the natural born towards.
w lIcu oil WCiC PiPCo -tAAO
men who were there with what you
might call the nerve turned out same
as usual, dashed and slowed their ham,
and turned to without any
chaw among themselves or any casting
of glances aft. The boy was dead, and
of the Asiatic cholera. Well, what of
it?
1.-The cholera had a swell chance 20
sweep the ship and make her charnal.
Sure. But what of that, either?
THAT was the way the decent, self
controlled men of the crew, forard,
viewed the matter, from their demea-
nor. So they did their early stunts,
and ate their breakfasts, and lit their
pipes when the smoking lamp was
aglow. and smoked in silence. Talking
wasn't going to help anybody or any
thing, and they knew it.
But the lily-livers of the crew
for'ard-and I am bound to say that
there were few Americans among them
took it in another way. They turned
out shaking and muttering and ex-
changing looks with each other. and
blamed if some of them didn't appear