The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-07-19
TRIPS OF OCEAN WAITS.
DERELICTS THAT CRUISE FOR
 THOUSANDS OF MILES.

Mrndreds of Them in the North Atlan- tic ImperiI the Ocean Liners-British
 and American Navies Occasionally
 Destroy Them--Joint Action What is
 Needed.
 The quest by British warships and the Newfoundland sealer Adventure for the direlect freighter Dunmore, adrift In the ocean shipping track since Jan uary, emphasizes the necessity for concerted measures by the great ma rine Powers for ridding the North At lantlc of these dangers to traffic.
 When we recall how the Elbe was sunk by collision with the collier Graf thie ofter leaving Southampton on a snowy winter morning in January 1895, and when we remember how the Bourgoyne went down after striking the bark Crowartyshire on the Grand Banks in a summer fog in 1898, in re- auires little effort of the imagination Ito conceive of similar, if not worse, disasters due to direlects which roam at win over the waters of the Western ocean.
 It is not unreasonable to conclude that through such cause the Naronic vanished in February, 1893, with sew enty-two souls; the Georgia passed from human ken in March, 1897, with fifty-four; the Huronian was plotted off the ocean in February, 1903, with forty-nine, or that score of tramp freighters were sent to the bottom in the past fifteen years.
 Special interest attaches to the Dun more because hers is one of the com paratively rare instances where a met al direlect has remained above water any length of time after being aban- doned, and because, moreover, she lies In the liner track and is thereby a more serious danger to transatlantic shipping than any other tenantless shell of modern times. Usually when a steel or iron craft is abandoned she is on the point of sinking. The Dunmore left Cardiff on December 20 for New the whole way, had her shaft broken and her hull so strained that the leaks threatened speedy submersion, Her crew were taken off and she was left adrift, remaining above water for three months, being sighted by more than twenty passing steamers thus far.
 The complaints of owners of other ships spurred the British Admiralty to action and they ordered cruisers from Bermuda to proceed in quest Of her, while the underwriters had the Adven- ture sent out from this port on sim- liar quest, to tow her to port. The Ad- venture failed to locate her, not pos sessing wireless telegraphy and there fore being unable to learn where the wreck was last seen and the two cruisers secured the ocean for a long while in the endeavor to bring her aim- less voyage to an end.
 The most common direlects are lunl- Der carrying vessels of wooden build and moderate size which meet bad weather, become dismasted, and having no steam power are helpless waifs in Ahe Atlantic fairway, sometimes drift sng about for months, if not years, be- cause their buoyant cargoes will let them sink.
 One of these, the Alma Cummings, an American schooner from Boston, made a record voyage of fifty-four days, during which she covered 1000 miles, and was sighted fifty times, She was caught in a blizzard off Cape May in February 1896 and her masts and rig ging were carried overheard, the jag ged stumps of the spars battering her sides apart The seas swept every thing overheard, flooded her hull and cabin. drenched her foodstuffs with brine and formed coating over the deck three feet thick. The wretched crew, the matches being all soaked could not make fire to warm them selves until they fired a rifle into a can of kerosene oil that set the hull on fire, and the blaze attracted the steam CT Queensmore, which rescued the crew, Hhe idea being that she would burn so that the seas would easily tear her apart
 But the wood of the cargo was too met, the fire failed and she started pn her long voyage around the Atlantic. At various times she was seen, till she nearly reached England; then she drove south past the Frencth coast; next she was sighted off the Azores; later she appeared near the equator and finally after eighteen months, she drlfted ashore at San Bias Island near Colon, Isthmus of Panama. During her amazing cruise at least six ships tried to set fire to her, but without avail, and though she was burned to the waters edge, she remained afioat'
 A dlrelect lumber carrier with an al- most equally curious record was the Fannie Wolston, which was afloat for 1,4O6 days and covered more than 5000 miles, but her voyage while apparently much longer than that of the Cum innings, was really not so, because she spent her time crossing and recross- ing her own tracks, moving around 1T circles about 200 miles off the Atlantic ciast, being sighted by no fewer thar forty-six ships during her atmless wanderings.
 Her range was from off the Delaware capes south to the lonely Sargossa Sea her swinging round this circle occu. pying about two years. She then wen hack and forth through this ghostly region, and next started north for Flor. ada, off which coast she was sighted Hwantv- threa fines by other vessels