Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1908-12-28
FACE DEATH in
SAVING WRECKS
ROB DAVY JONES' LOCKER LIFE
IN HAND
PAY SMALL, BUT RISK PROVES
IRRESISTIBLE LURE
Men Who Snatch Vessels from Oceans
Nav and Harness the Storm
Most Daring of All
Workers
1sneoial corresnondence.l

most thrilling and the most danger
Gus of all those piled on the seven
seas. His part it is to rescue ships
which have been wrecked, sunk or
beached by the storms they encounter
and to bring to profitable service once
more the vessels at which the ocean
has grasped. 1t is his to grapple with
and thwart Father Neptune.
Hundreds of thousands OF persons
throughout the country have read, for
instance of the recent wreck of the
United States cruiser Yankee on the
Hen and Chickens reef off the Cape
Cod shore. To pull her from the rocks
on which she was impaled the gov
eminent has spent over 100000, only
to see the vessel turn turtle and sink,
thus necessitating repetition of the
work. So much the public knows.
But of the men who snatched this ves-
sci and who annually snatch thou
sands of vessels from the devouring
NAV of the ocean and of their profess
sion not one person in ten thousand
knows.
Along every mile of the thousands on
the coast line of this country-Atlan-
tic gulf and Pacific--the wrecker is
plying his romantic profession, the
most dangerous, as it is the least
known of all marine trades. For the
shipwrecker has profession which he
carries out on the wrecSing ship where
he lives. What his career is its dan
gers and work, are described by A. w.
Roll1er in Appleton's magazine.
Death Levies Heavy Tolls
1.-THE career of the shipwrecker."
says Mr.. Rolker, Consists Of series
of hardships and adventures and ac-
cidents and narrow escapes from the
first day he enlists with a big wreck
ing company up to The time he is
brought ashore from the grim ship
he calls home crippled or fatally in
juFed. all the professions that de-
mand heavy toll of human life none,
not even mining or powdcrmaking, is
as dangerous as the one of these
wreckers. Every year these daring
men, who brave storm and wave and
tempest TO save the stranded liner
to raise the sunken ocean greyhound!
to rescue the ship impaled upon rocks
and If nothing else, to- salve what
valuable cargo may be removed from
helpless wrecks. meet death by the
score. Many of them, exposed often
for days and nights to the icy blasts
of winter seas, to driving blizzards
and to drenching storms that bite to
the marrow, succumb to pneumonia.
Others at work on pitching, tossing
barges have legs or arms shattered
during the risky operations of remov-
ing masts or singing wrecking pumps
or other castings that weigh tons
Others have hands or feet so dread
fully frozen that they must be ampu-
tated And still others are wiped out
of existence after suffering hours of
untold agony and exposure before the
eyes of their helpless comrades.
How human creatures may be in
duced to accept such life of hardship
and to take the risks OF working in a
profession where it is almost nothing
but a mere question of time before
they look mutilation or a narrowing
death in the face, seems no less than Il
psychological problem. Still, despite
the fact that the wages of the average
wrecker are not more than he can
earn as a sailor before the mast, none
of the big wrecking companies ever
runs short of god men. The very dan
ger and excitement of juggling with
death lures men into the Wrecking
crews just as it lures thousands to en-
list in regiments during time of war;
just as 1t lures men to risk burial alive
within the shield of an under-river tun-
nell Like these tunnelers, the wrecker
has long since ceased to think of the
chances he is taking. He has risked
so often and has come out of tight
places so successfully that he begins
to regard the danger of his work as a
mere everyday affair, and when once
in a while he is jolted to the soul by
seeing his comrades perish miserably
before his eyes, even then to his unin-
aginative brain there seems no extra
ordinary chance of danger
OF what type of men do these wreck
ing crews consist? OF several distinct
types. In general, of the sort born to
live by Drawn and muscle, of unafraid
men who seem to defy the unconquer-
able elements; men who sometimes for
months live together aboard a wreck
ing schooner without setting foot on
shore; men who would not close an
eye in a decent bed for want of the
feel of pitching, plunging board bunk
beneath them.
Task Simply ctupendous
what it means to salve a wreck"
continues the Appleton article, 'is
something that few outside of practical
seamen can properly appreciate. Tho
wreck is q ponderous, unwieldy noun
tain of steel and oak, weighing be-
tween 5000 and 10000 tons, often dan
gerous for any vessel to approach; and
this must be lifted bodily and floated
from the decks of pitching, unstable
soows and barges. The wreck may be
submerged beneath fifteen or thirty
feet of water, and so stove in that div
ers must go down and effect temporary
repairs before it can be raised. 1t may
be wreck so shattered that it is not
worth raising, so that the wreckers'
work consists merely in blowing up the
hulk and removing it as a menace to
navigation. Or the vessel may be fair
ly intact but sunk too deep to make
attempt at raising advisable, the
wreckers' work consisting in salving
valuable cargo. Often the wreck is one
not submerged at all. A ship may
have run onto q reef where it lies, nose
on a crag and stern af1oat. rising and
falling on the ocean swell, pounding
and pounding, until the very ocean bot
tom drones and she is gradually brok
en- to pieces"
1t was thus that the Yankee lay
with her bow fast on a rock. Into her
stern was poured a thousand barrels
Of cement in the hope that its weight
might lift the forward part of the yes
sci clear of the rock on which it was
impaled. The fact that it did not do so
made only more difficult this now fam
Gus piece Of wrecking, since all the
cement had to be removed in order to
raise the vessel by compressed air. the
wreckers working all the time on a
dangerous lee shore
There are other ways In which ship
gets into trouble which demands the
shin doctors presence. The wreck may
be that Of a steamer which has pointed
its nose shoreward in fog, finding
beach. blowing a furrow through the
Welding sand, and never coming to a
.t-.N.