The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-12-20

paled. The fact that 1t did not do so made only more difficult this now fa- nous 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 dangerous lee shore.
 There are other ways in which a ship gets into trouble which demands the ship doctors presence. The. wreck may be that of a steamer which has pointed its nose shoreward in a fog. finding a beach, blowing a furrow through the yielding sand and never coming to a halt until it Is stuck fast all but high and dry, a helpless victim to the next storm that comes screeching up the coast to pile breakers against her and crowd her even higher upon the beach.
 It Is not easy to say which of all the dangerous opportunities of the wreoker is most dangerous. but seldom does any exceed that which in addition to other dangers needs a storm to make it suc- cessful--the particular method of wrecking known as walking ship to her cables"
 When big vessel like an ocean liner loses it's bearings and the giant nose turns shoreward and into the sands, the monstrous hull, backed by the enor- nous impact of six thousand or twelve thousand tons moving at a speed from ten to twenty knots an hour. gouses into the yielding bottom like a gigan- tic blow that digs a furrow fifteen or twenty feet deep, 1t does not come to rest until the steamer is all but hgh and dry surrounded by water narolv deep enough to float brick schooner. The wreckers method for drasgins an unfortunate of this sort back 70 usep water is what is known as waking the ship to her cables"
 To walk a ship to her cables, wnst the wrecker wants is a storm. Not . cheap, little thirty or forty-knot zephyr' but a real storm. A baby hurricane' the wilder the better, for literally ne intends to harness the storm with giant bavaers. whereafter he stakes his lits ana fine fate of the vessel that the seq will pull the wreck back to safety.
 To harness one Of these storms ne takes from four to six twenty tnousane pound anchors, attaches a hawser TOUT teen inches around to each one: arops zach anchor into the sea at distance from 250 to 800 fathoms astern or the wreck and brings the ends of the nav sers aboard the stranded vessel
 grhere they are set up tight as fiddle strings by means of the ships wind. iasses. Then, unless the storm preaks at once, he takes cargo and everything that is movable out of the ship 10 HghS- en her and awaits the "blow." AS the fury of the storm increases and the seas become higher, up goes the stern, momentarily afioat on the house.htEh breakers and down she comes with thud and a crash that threatens to snap out her masts while men in sou'westers and yellow oil-skins are obliged to hold fast not to be knocked ofr their feet. Every time she is lifted and momen- farily afioat on a breaker, she is being dragged seaward-an ineh--two inches "a foot at a time. For although each time she rises the surf tends to east her higher up on the beach. there are four or six of the mightest cables 1t IA possible for human beings to make, each of these cables having an elastic ity of something like twenty-five or thirty feet, and the combined elastici- ties, or pulling power, of all the haw- sers is even Tnightier than the sea l Therefore, instead of the wreck beins battered higher up the strand. if ia pulled seaward. and merely the occa- sional setting up of the hawsers Is nec- essary to tauten this harness thrown over the storm.
 But however he works, whether 1t be in dragging a vessel OF blowing her up with dynamite for the beneht of navigation, the wrecker's life is in dam ger. What he has done the public some times reads, how he does it. seldom or never.